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      Tiger Woods Limps Through a Disappointing Round at PGA Championship

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      Woods could make only wry jokes after a painful and disappointing first round at the P.G.A. Championship.TULSA, Okla. — Tiger Woods has a good sense of humor, though it is rare for him to use it in a public setting. But at 46, he is evolving. What was once unthinkable for him — playfully mocking his poor play on the golf course — is one of his new, winsome tools.On Thursday, six weeks after his stirring comeback at the Masters Tournament, Woods returned to competitive golf in the first round of the P.G.A. Championship. After a blazing start with two early birdies, Woods was limping a little on his right leg, which was surgically reconstructed after multiple serious fractures sustained in his horrific car crash early last year. A couple of holes later, Woods was limping a lot, even sometimes using a golf club like a cane to ascend or descend hills.Not surprisingly, his score soon reflected his infirmity as he shot a four-over-par 74 with seven bogeys in his final 13 holes. After he had hobbled to a rostrum for a news conference, he was asked about his rebuilt leg.“Yeah, not feeling as good as I would like it to be,” he said with a smile. Woods added that he could not put weight on his right leg in his backswing — known as loading — and he also struggled to push off his leg on the downswing, too.“Loading hurts, pressing off it hurts, and walking hurts and twisting hurts,” he said.Woods then deadpanned: “It’s just golf. If I don’t play that, if I don’t do that, then I’m all right.”“Loading hurts, pressing off it hurts, and walking hurts and twisting hurts,” Woods said.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“We’ll start the recovery process and get after it tomorrow,” he added, predicting that his evening would include ice baths and myriad efforts to reduce inflammation in his right leg.Tiger Woods’s Lasting Impact and Uncertain FutureThe star golfer, one of the most influential athletes of the last quarter-century, is mounting a comeback after being badly injured in a car crash.The 2022 Masters: After saying that he would step back from competitive golf, Tiger Woods teed off at Augusta once again.Four Days That Changed Golf: When Woods won the 1997 Masters, he remade the game and catapulted himself to stardom.A Complicated Legacy: Our columnist looks back at Woods’s stunning feats and shocking falls.His Enduring Influence: Even when Woods is not playing, his impact on the sport can be felt at a PGA tournament.And so, Woods’s ongoing return to elite golf is following the bumpy, irregular progression that even he forecast before the Masters when he said he expected a series of good days and bad days.“It’s a process,” Woods said.Part of that process, as Woods acknowledged on Tuesday, was that his right leg and his ailing back, which has been operated on five times, no longer allowed him to practice for long periods of time, which had been routine for him since he was a kindergartner. While watching Woods play on Thursday, it was easy to wonder if some of his troubles on the golf course were related to a lack of preparation off it, especially for someone like Woods who was once renowned for exhausting work habits.For example, one of Woods’s playing partners Thursday was Rory McIlroy, who is the first-round leader after a five-under-par 65. McIlroy successfully navigated the tricky sloping greens of the Southern Hills Country Club with deft chipping, bunker play and deadly accurate putting.Woods’s short game was once probably his greatest strength, but on Thursday it let him down repeatedly. Moreover, Woods appeared uncomfortable, or unsure, over those shots, which was startling. Woods with a wedge or a putter in his hands had always been commanding and cocksure.But on the sixth hole that Woods played Thursday, when he was still two under par for the round, he was in a greenside bunker with a fairly straightforward shot to the pin, which was 23 feet away. Shockingly, he blasted his shot 21 feet past the hole and made bogey.Three holes later, playing the 18th hole because his group began its round on the 10th tee, Woods was in another greenside bunker and again thumped his ball 20 feet past the hole for a bogey. Even after Woods rallied for a birdie three holes later, another bunker shot on the next hole sailed over the green and led to yet another bogey.Woods looked exasperated, and as often happens to any golfer, missteps in one facet of the game led to a lack of execution in another part of part of the game as Woods failed to convert several long- or medium-range putts. Keep in mind that some people think Woods was the greatest pressure putter of golf’s modern era.Asked about his difficulties from the sand, Woods said: “Yeah, all the bunker shots sort of came out hot.”Tiger Woods playing from the bunker near the eighth green during the first round of the P.G.A. Championship.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBut his bunker play was not the only way Thursday’s round seemed uncharacteristic for Woods. For more than 25 years, Woods was known as an aggressive golfer, and he all but invented the bombing-it-off-the-tee-with-a-driver style that has overtaken the sport.But on Thursday, as McIlroy and the third golfer in the grouping, Jordan Spieth, launched drivers far down the fairway, Woods was hitting long irons and playing for position. Sometimes he was more than 60 yards behind McIlroy off the tee, although as Woods later said, not being able to push off his right leg caused him to slice shots to the right.“I wouldn’t have been so far back if I would have hit the iron shot solid and put the ball in the fairway,” he said. “I was playing to my spots, and those guys obviously have a different game plan. The game is just different. It’s much more aggressive now, and I know that. But I was playing to my spots. If I would have hit the ball solidly on those two holes and put the ball in the fairway, I would have been fine.”He continued: “But I didn’t do that. I put the ball in the rough.”The smile that Woods brought to the beginning of his news conference was dissipating. The golf comeback that seemed unlikely only 15 months ago would continue Friday, Woods said. But before he walked away with a noticeable, lurching limp, Woods had a last comment.“It was a frustrating day,” he said. More

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      Tiger Woods Is on the Course at the P.G.A. Championship

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      In his first tournament since the Masters in April, Woods finished his first nine holes at even par but ended the round at a disappointing four over.Tiger Woods returned to a major championship on Thursday, and after a good start, things started to go awry.Playing in a star-studded group with Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy, Woods finished at four over par at the P.G.A. Championship. McIlroy was the early clubhouse leader at five under.Playing at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., where he won the 2007 P.G.A. Championship, Woods at first showed few obvious signs of the severe leg injuries he sustained in a car crash in February 2021. Toward the end of his first nine holes, he appeared to start limping a little more.And though he got down to two under in the early going, his second-nine performance was poor.Woods had returned to the majors at the Masters last month after missing more than 500 days of top-flight golf following his crash. His one-under opening round raised the echoes of the past, but he struggled the rest of the way, making the cut but finishing 47th. At that tournament, he was limping and seemed to struggle to crouch fully to line up putts.Woods started on the 10th hole Thursday, and birdied it with a 3-foot putt after a flawless chip. He birdied the 14th as well with a 15-footer. But he found the rough and a bunker on 15 and could not get up and down, falling back to one under.On the 18th, a difficult hole, he found a greenside bunker with a poor iron shot and missed a 20-foot putt to fall back to even.That started a poor stretch, and he made two more bogeys, at No. 1 — a tee shot into the rough behind a tree was the culprit — and at No. 2, where he knocked a long putt from the fringe 10 feet past and missed the comebacker.Woods struck back with a birdie on No. 3, making a 10-foot-plus putt that got his big gallery going. But he gave that right back with a bad bunker shot on No. 4, which rolled over and off the green. He wound up with another bogey.He dropped another stroke on 8, finding a bunker on the challenging par 3, then blowing the next shot far past the hole and failing to make the long putt back.On the ninth, he seemed to get lucky when his tee shot caromed off a tree and landed in the fairway. But his second shot flew over the green, and he flubbed the chip, not reaching the green. Two more shots, and he had another bogey. More

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      P.G.A. Championship: Jordan Spieth Aims for Career Grand Slam

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      And why not? After a couple of years of uncharacteristically mediocre play, he sees an opportunity at the P.G.A. Championship to complete a career Grand Slam.TULSA, Okla. — Sixteen months ago, Jordan Spieth spent long stretches during post-round news conferences answering questions about what was wrong with him.Or what was missing from his once prized golf game.The world’s top-ranked men’s player for much of 2015-16 and the winner of three major championships in roughly the same period, Spieth had tumbled to 92nd in the world rankings by January of last year. His best finish at a 2020 major had been a tie for 46th.In this time, Spieth handled the almost weekly inquisition about whether he would ever regain his form with poise and sincerity. For the most part, he kept his smile. But that smile is far wider now. With a rally in 2021 that included a second-place finish at the British Open and a surge this year that has included a 13th PGA Tour victory and two second-place finishes, Spieth has climbed back into the top 10 worldwide.On Wednesday, one day before the first round of the 2022 P.G.A. Championship, Spieth met with reporters and happily spent most of his time answering questions about whether he might achieve a measure of golfing immortality this week.Jordan Spieth chipped to the green on Wednesday while practicing for the P.G.A. Championship in Tulsa, Okla.Matt York/Associated PressOnly five golfers — Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods — have won each of the game’s major championships. With victories at the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open, Spieth, 28, needs only a P.G.A. Championship title to join that gilded group.“It’s the elephant in the room for me,” Spieth said Wednesday with a small grin. “If you told me I was going to win one tournament the rest of my life, I’d say I want to win this one. Long term, it would be really cool to say that you captured the four biggest golf tournaments in the world that are played in different parts of the world and different styles, too. So you feel like you kind of accomplished golf when you win a career Grand Slam.”Tiger Woods’s Lasting Impact and Uncertain FutureThe star golfer, one of the most influential athletes of the last quarter-century, is mounting a comeback after being badly injured in a car crash.The 2022 Masters: After saying that he would step back from competitive golf, Tiger Woods teed off at Augusta once again.Four Days That Changed Golf: When Woods won the 1997 Masters, he remade the game and catapulted himself to stardom.A Complicated Legacy: Our columnist looks back at Woods’s stunning feats and shocking falls.His Enduring Influence: Even when Woods is not playing, his impact on the sport can be felt at a PGA tournament.Accomplished golf? As in mastered it? That’s an almost celestial ambition in a sport that keeps almost all of its devotees cruelly grounded on a regular basis. But Spieth can be forgiven. When his game was in an abyss, he endured many months muttering to himself as he marched off the tee on his way to the high rough. And no golfer mutters to himself so systematically, indeed professionally, with the zany zeal that Spieth exhibits.Even with his golf ball sailing straight and farther now, Spieth has not stopped his frequent self-commentary on the golf course, always with his forbearing caddie, Michael Greller, the former sixth grade math teacher, nodding silently as he walks alongside his boss.Greller’s role should not be underestimated given Spieth’s active brain (and mouth). Spieth acknowledged as much Wednesday.“I’ve been trying to really have some fun more, and Michael does a good job with that,” Spieth said. “If I wake up tomorrow a little on the wrong side of the bed, as we all do, he’ll try and talk to me about something other than golf. He’ll step in, and having kind of a friend on the bag that can keep it light can sometimes turn things in that direction.”Jordan Spieth handed a club to his caddie, Michael Greller, during a practice round leading up to the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club in April.Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesSpieth will be tested in other ways in Thursday’s first round. He will play with Woods and the four-time major champion Rory McIlroy, a grouping that is likely to be followed by about 70 percent of the tens of thousands of fans on the grounds at Southern Hills Country Club. The atmosphere will be charged, and because a golf gallery does not remain seated as at other sporting events, it will become more like a noisy, chaotic, ever-moving wave.But Spieth, whose wife, Annie, gave birth to the couple’s first child, a son, Sammy, in November, had a different take.“I’ll get to tell my kid about this someday — I got to play with Tiger in a major,” Spieth said.He added that he had done it before, but as he acknowledged Woods’s near-fatal car crash in February 2021, he added: “Last year, you weren’t sure if that was ever going to happen again.”Spieth did concede that the massive crowd could be a distraction, but one he has gotten used to. When he nearly won the Masters as a 20-year-old and finished first at the tournament a year later, in 2015, Spieth attracted some teeming crowds himself.“Sometimes, when the crowds get big enough, it’s kind of just a color blur in a way,” he said. “But Tiger and Rory are great to play with. They’re quick. They’re positive. I think you have to embrace it and recognize that it’s cool and it’s obviously great for golf.”The grouping might even be a blessing, Spieth said, as a way to keep his mind off the opportunity to achieve the career Grand Slam of major championships.“If I can play well these next couple days, given the crowds that will be out there, then I think the weekend might actually feel a little like a breather in a way,” he said. “So that’s how I’m looking at it.” More

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      The Scramble at Southern Hills

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      P.G.A. Championships are planned years in advance, but the club had less than two years to prepare when the event was moved from Trump Bedminster.When players tee off at this week’s P.G.A. Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., they will be playing a course that has been renovated since the last time it hosted a P.G.A. in 2007 (when Tiger Woods won by two). Gil Hanse, who has become the go-to architect for courses hoping to host a United States Open or P.G.A. Championship, renovated the course in 2019.But the players are also competing on a course that wasn’t selected until early last year — an unheard-of rush for a major championship — and one that had not been planning to host its first major after the renovation until 2030.How this came about was something no one involved could have imagined when the course for the 2022 P.G.A. Championship was announced in 2014.Every major golf championship is planned years, if not decades, in advance. The courses that will host are locked in, and the process to get them ready for players, and sponsors, usually requires years.The U.S. Open has planned out past some people’s lifetimes, with Oakland Hills in Bloomfield, Mich., tapped to host the 2051 tournament. The British Open is set for courses until 2025. The Masters, of course, will be at Augusta National Golf Club, unless the world ends.The P.G.A. Championship, which is organized by the Professional Golfers Association of America, has long been on a four-year activation cycle. This means teams have time to get to the next site to plan the tournament, drum up sponsorships and plan the course setup, which includes asking for course modifications.Rory McIlroy putting on the fourth green at Southern Hills on Monday. The course was chosen for the P.G.A. Championship just last year.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe P.G.A. Championship is planned out to 2031 — or 2034 if you count a few open years until the championship is at the P.G.A.’s new headquarters in Frisco, Texas.The only exception was this year, when a course and all the planning for the 2022 championship happened in 16 months.So why and how did the P.G.A. of America and Southern Hills have to get ready so quickly?In 2014, the P.G.A. awarded the men’s major to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. Its owner, Donald J. Trump, was then a businessman with a portfolio of 17 golf clubs in the United States and Scotland.That same year, Mr. Trump bought Turnberry, a Scottish course that had hosted the British Open four times. He had a reputation for investing heavily in his clubs and also for wanting to host big tournaments, which can be a hassle for private clubs that have members who can’t play as the tournament gets close.It seemed like a solid plan to host the tournament at what is better known as Trump Bedminster.“The P.G.A. of America is excited to begin a new chapter of major championship history by taking two of our premier championships to venues that bear the Trump label of excellence,” Ted Bishop, then-president of the P.G.A. of America, said at the time.Mr. Trump said: “Having the P.G.A. is a very, very big deal. So, it’s very important to me. It’s a great honor for me.”Then he was elected president in 2016. Fast forward to Jan. 6, 2021, when President Trump gave a speech that fired up a crowd in Washington, which then stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.Five days later, the P.G.A. of America announced it had voted to pull the 2022 major from the Trump course.“It has become clear that conducting the P.G.A. Championship at Trump Bedminster would be detrimental to the P.G.A. of America brand and would put at risk the P.G.A.’s ability to deliver on many programs and sustain the longevity of our mission,” Jim Richerson, the P.G.A. of America’s president, said.And that left the organization scrambling to find a course to host the tournament and get a team there. While a major championship is about top golf, it’s also about building the equivalent of a small town that can bring in the maximum revenue for the governing bodies. Rushing that isn’t ideal.Some 30 courses raised their hands. One of those was Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, which has hosted the tournament three times.“When the P.G.A. of America said we’re going to move the tournament, I said we need to step in and help,” said David Pillsbury, chief executive of Invited (the new name for ClubCorp), which owns Firestone, and a former PGA Tour executive. “I said we can do this. We have a world-class-tested course. We have had the Senior Players Championship there, so there’s a senior staff there.”In the end, none of the suitors were selected. And the P.G.A. went with Southern Hills, which it knew well because it was hosting the Senior P.G.A. Championship that year.“One of the main reasons we ended up selecting Southern Hills when we decided to move it is because we had the Kitchen Aid Senior P.G.A. there in 2021,” said Kerry Haigh, chief championships officer for the P.G.A. “We were working with the community, the city, we had a lot of plans together.”But a senior tournament is not the same as a P.G.A. Championship. For one, the course is set up shorter and easier. And there just aren’t as many fans or sponsors to accommodate. The dollars are much less.But Southern Hills had something that other courses didn’t. “We had staff on site,” Haigh said. “We also had a contract in place for them to host a P.G.A. Championship, albeit for a later year. All the things that needed to happen — agreeing on a contract, moving staff, having relationships with all those people — were already in place.”Tiger Woods playing a shot from a bunker at Southern Hills during practice on Monday.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe course, though, would have to play longer. At a par 70, it was set at 6,968 yards for the Senior P.G.A. This week it will measure 7,635 yards for the P.G.A. That added distance can change the angles that players have to take; it can also alter the setups.While Pillsbury wished Firestone had been selected, he said the selection of Southern Hills for a quick turnaround made a lot of sense. “To organize a tournament quickly, the first thing you have to do is mobilize the membership,” he said.And Haigh said they had that from the start. “A big part of selecting Southern Hills was the support of the membership, who is passionate about major championship golf,” he said. “They were very quick to remind us of how much they wanted to host the P.G.A. Championship and that they had the support of the city and the community to turn this around immediately to support the P.G.A.”A major tournament, though, is more than the course. It’s about the fans and the sponsors who will help fund a prize pool worth over $12 million, with more than $2 million going to the winner.“It’s a midsized market, so that concern was raised that they wouldn’t have enough money to go again,” said John Handley, director of championship sales and marketing at the P.G.A. “We didn’t experience a whole lot of that. The membership at Southern Hills was incredibly helpful. We felt we had a good pulse of the market. The concern never materialized.”The experience had the chief executive of the P.G.A., Seth Waugh, pondering if planning years in advance was even worth it. In an interview with Gary Williams, a golf commentator, Waugh said this past year had taught him that a major could be planned more quickly.“Frankly, when you say 20 to 25 years, I think it’s a little bit, possibly irresponsible, because who knows what’s going to happen between then and now,” he said. “You certainly don’t need that much time to lock something in. When I made the decision to move to Southern Hills a year and a half ago, we had 30-plus venues that were willing to take us on.” More

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      Rich Beem Looks Back at His Improbable P.G.A. Championship

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      Twenty years ago, he beat Tiger Woods by one stroke to become the surprise winner of the event. It was his last win on the tour.Look for the usual suspects — Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, and the hottest player in the game, Scottie Scheffler — to be in contention at this week’s P.G.A. Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla.But don’t be shocked if someone emerges out of nowhere to upstage the big names.After all, 20 years ago, Rich Beem did exactly that.Heading into the 2002 P.G.A. Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn., no one was talking about Beem, though he had won the International tournament two weeks earlier in Colorado. People were talking about Tiger Woods, who had captured two majors that year, and other top players.Heading into the final day of play, Beem was trailing Justin Leonard, the 1997 British Open champion, by three strokes. Woods was five back.On Sunday, however, while Leonard struggled with a five-over 77 to finish in a tie for fourth, Beem surged.Two shots that stood out were the 7-wood Beem hit from about 270 yards away on No. 11, a par 5, which led to an eagle, and the 35-foot birdie putt he converted at No. 16. He posted a 68 to prevail by one over Woods. It was Beem’s third victory on the tour.Woods, after a couple of bogeys on the back nine, birdied the last four holes to put pressure on Beem — which he felt as he got ready to hit his second shot on the final hole.“I literally was like, ‘Just don’t shank this in front of all these people,’” Beem said. “‘Don’t screw this up now.’”Beem reached the putting surface with his approach, and then got down in three putts for a bogey. After the final one dropped, he did a little dance on the green.“I could relax,” he said. “I could breathe again. I was done.”Beem will never forget the shot at 11. Perhaps the same could be said of Woods.During a practice day leading up to the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine, Woods walked toward the green on No. 12. Beem was heading in the opposite direction.“Doesn’t say hi,” Beem recalled. “Doesn’t say, ‘What’s up?’”Then, Beem said, Woods asked him:How the heck did you get it home in two on Sunday on No. 11?Beem didn’t miss a beat.Beem putting on the eighth hole during the final round of the 2002 P.G.A. Championship.Jeff Haynes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“When you got it, you got it,” he said.Leonard, who was paired with Beem in 2002, had a similar impression about the approach at 11.“That’s a shot I was in awe of,” Leonard recalled. “I felt like that was kind of the tournament right there.”Not quite. Not with Woods still on the course.Beem heard the roars while Woods was making his late rally.“I heard them,” Beem said, “but never really thought about them or wanted to react to them.”Beem was only 31, but the victory would be his last on the tour.“I’m really bummed out about that,” he said. “That’s probably one of the things that eats at me more than anything else about my career. I probably didn’t grind as hard as I should have in some instances.”He knew a lot about grinding. Before he qualified for the PGA Tour in 1998, Beem was an assistant pro for two years at El Paso Country Club in Texas. His salary was about $13,000. He made roughly twice as much as that in mini-tour events in New Mexico and West Texas.Before then, for about nine months, he sold cellphones and car stereos in the Seattle area.Beem said he was a good phone salesman. The stereos, however, were another matter.“I was just awful,” he said. “I didn’t realize speakers were different sizes for different cars.”Beem, 51, now works as a commentator for Sky Sports, though he hopes to compete more often on PGA Tour Champions, the circuit for professional golfers 50 and older.In the meantime, being exempt as a former P.G.A. champion, he’ll tee off Thursday with the younger guys at Southern Hills. His goal is to play on the weekend.“I’m healthy enough,” he said. “The body feels fantastic. I’m very capable of making the cut.” More

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      This P.G.A. Champion Lost the Wanamaker Trophy. Oops.

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      It goes to the winner of the P.G.A. Championship, but Walter Hagen lost it after he won in 1925.It’s nearly impossible to talk about the P.G.A. Championship‘s Wanamaker Trophy without mentioning how the five-time champion Walter Hagen lost it in Chicago after winning the event in 1925.As the story goes, while out in Chicago celebrating the win, Hagen gave his taxi driver $5 and asked him to take the cumbersome trophy to his hotel. It not only never arrived, but Hagen never admitted the loss to the P.G.A. until he lost the championship in 1928 and had to turn the trophy over to the winner.The trophy is tied to the history of the P.G.A. It was named after the department store owner Rodman Wanamaker, who in 1916 formed the Professional Golfers’ Association of America.“Rodman Wanamaker was a big fan of professional golf and perhaps even more so of Walter Hagen,” said Connor Lewis, a golf historian. “He believed that professional golf was the way of the future — perhaps a decade ahead of the general public — who at that time believed in the ideals of the amateur game.”Wanamaker invited a group of golf professionals, including Hagen, to meet and form the association to help elevate the professional game.“In those times professional golf was not an actual occupation; it was frowned upon,” said Tom Clavin, the author of “Sir Walter,” a biography of Walter Hagen.Wanamaker had two main motives, Clavin said. One was to form a professional association to enhance the position of golf. Another: Money.“Let’s face it,” Clavin said. “There was a commercial motivation for forming the P.G.A. The man was a magnate of department stores. By forming the P.G.A., he could make golf more popular, bring more people into playing golf and sell a lot of clubs, balls and clothing.”The P.G.A. named the cup after him, and the first P.G.A. Championship was held in 1916 at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, N.Y. Jim Barnes won the trophy, which was designed by Dieges & Clust — the same company that created the Heisman Trophy in 1934. The P.G.A. silver trophy weighs 27 pounds and is more than two feet tall and two feet wide, handle to handle.“Wanamaker’s prestige and his bankroll gave golf a great jump-start, and it was perfect timing,” Clavin said. “It was after World War I, during the Roaring Twenties, and there were more and more professionals playing. More people started following golf and wanted to know who’s winning. There was Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen catching headlines. Professionals were starting to storm the gates. And Hagen was leading the charge.”Walter Hagen, right, accepting the Wanamaker Trophy from Charles Smalley, the president of the Olympia Fields Country Club, after defeating Bill Mehlhorn to successfully defend his title at the 1925 P.G.A. Championship.Getty ImagesHagen won the first of his five P.G.A. Championships in 1921, but didn’t win again until 1924. For the 1925 event, Hagen lugged the trophy to the event at Olympia Field Country Club, near Chicago. He won again — but that’s also when he lost it.In 1926, Hagen defended his title without the trophy. It was P.G.A. policy for the winner to return the trophy the following year, according to Bob Denney. a P.G.A. historian. Hagen told officials, “I will win it anyway, so I didn’t bring it.” Hagen said the same thing in 1927 to defend his title.“That was Hagen — they just laughed it off,” Clavin said. “He was a showman and great for golf. Everybody was just winking — ‘Hey, that’s Walter.’”It wasn’t until 1928, when Leo Diegel won, that Hagen confessed to losing the trophy. Again, it was awkward, but officials shrugged it off, Denney said. The missing trophy was replaced with one made by R. Wallace and Sons of Wallingford, Conn. It was ready by the 1929 PGA Championship, with Diegel’s name on it. Diegel successfully defended his title in that year’s tournament and finally took home a trophy, but it wasn’t the Wanamaker.“You would be hard pressed to find the Stanley Cup or the Heisman where the winner actually lost it,” Clavin said.In 1931, the P.G.A. announced that the trophy had been found. A janitor cleaning the basement of the building that had once housed the Walter Hagen Golf Products Corporation in Grand Rapids, Mich., discovered a large box containing the trophy, Denney said. How it got there remains a mystery.“The taxi driver probably dropped it at the hotel, and the hotel sent it to his company headquarters,” said Paul Wold, a historian of Rochester Country Club, where Hagen was club professional.Hagen, not one for much introspection, didn’t give it another thought, Clavin said.“You get the impression he was a real prince of a guy,” Wold said. “People loved him, and he really just raised the total esteem of professional golf.”It’s difficult to top the Hagen incident, but there have been minor gaffes over the years.Collin Morikawa reacting to the lid of the Wanamaker Trophy falling off after he won the 2020 P.G.A. Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco.Charlie Riedel/Associated PressIn 2014, at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky, the trophy lid fell off as Ted Bishop, who was then the P.G.A. president, handed the trophy to the winner, Rory McIlroy — who caught it before it hit the ground. “You saved me,” Bishop said.At the 2020 P.G.A. Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, the lid fell off again. Collin Morikawa hoisted the Wanamaker, shaking it until the top lid clanged off and dropped to the ground. Morikawa clutched his chest, replaced the lid, gently lifted the trophy again and kissed it.While the Wanamaker Trophy passes to a new champion each year, winners also get a replica engraved on site to keep. The P.G.A. has the original, which will soon be on display at its headquarters in Frisco, Texas.“It would be lousy to have nothing to show for the win,” Wold said. “Wouldn’t it?” More

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      Prize Money and Sponsorships Are Growing in Women’s Golf, but Is It Enough?

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      Golfers will compete for a $5 million purse when the L.P.G.A.’s first major of the season begins on Thursday. But women continue to lag far behind men.Brittany Lincicome started playing on the L.P.G.A. Tour in 2005, when it was a struggling endeavor with few events. Now, in her 18th season, the tour is thriving and she has no plans to retire any time soon.“My parents had said, ‘Play 10 years and you can retire,’” Lincicome said. “Now there’s no end in sight. The prize money is out there. The purses are going up every year. It would be hard to leave. Plus, I would love to get a win and have my daughter there with me.”Lincicome, who is pregnant with her second child, said the difference between her rookie season and today is the sponsors, who have elevated the quality of the courses the golfers play. “It’s cool to see where we came from and what direction we’re going,” she said.Her first major victory came in 2009 at the Chevron Championship, formerly known as the ANA Inspiration and an L.P.G.A. major since 1983. This year’s tournament, which begins on Thursday and has long been associated with Dinah Shore, an actress, talk show host and early supporter of the women’s tour, will be the last to be held at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif.A central part of the event has been Poppie’s Pond, where the champion, her caddie and any number of friends and family take a victory plunge adjacent to the 18th green.Whether the pond will move to Houston, where Chevron is headquartered next year, as part of the company assuming the title sponsorship, is unclear. But, pond or not, one of the five women’s majors has a corporate sponsor to keep it going, with a purse that has increased nearly $2 million this year, to $5 million from $3.1 million.“It’s bittersweet,” said Stacy Lewis, whose first professional victory came at the event in 2011, when Kraft Nabisco was the sponsor. “It will always have a special place for me. But as a tournament it was time. When we lost Kraft, the tour needed a lot of time bringing ANA on board. And the fan base has shrunk over the past 10 years.”While the L.P.G.A. Tour lags behind the PGA Tour in prize money, sponsors for the best female golfers in the world have been stepping up — new deals for tournaments, money for the developmental tour and increased support for athletes who want to have families.Purses have also risen to $90 million this year, up from $67 million in 2019.“The purses are super important so we can have the best tournament schedule that we can put together and allow the best women in the world to reach their goals,” said Mollie Marcoux Samaan, who became the L.P.G.A. commissioner last year.Such increases have come slowly. A decade ago, Marcoux’s predecessor, Mike Whan, now the chief executive of the U.S.G.A., encouraged players to talk about their golf, but to make sure they thanked sponsors for getting behind the tour.In his new role, Whan has brought in ProMedica, a health care company, as the first presenting sponsor of the U.S. Women’s Open. The purse has nearly doubled, to $10 million from $5.5 million. But it wasn’t easy.“I saw how much money the U.S.G.A. lost on the U.S. Women’s Open,” Whan said. “I could see they were doing the right thing. But they weren’t reaching out to companies that also wanted to do the right thing.”The companies that are coming in as sponsors of the L.P.G.A. Tour are aligning their financial backing with broader diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. KPMG was among the first to do so with its sponsorship of the Women’s P.G.A. Championship in 2014.“We’ve more than doubled the purse since then,” said Shawn Quill, managing director and national sports industry leader at KPMG. “We’ve been able to put the L.P.G.A. players on the best courses in the world, the same ones that the men play.”This year’s event is at Congressional Country Club, where Rory McIlroy won the men’s U.S. Open in 2011.As a title sponsor, KPMG has not only increased the prize money, but has also added a women’s leadership summit, which focuses on C-suite executives and future leaders. “As sponsors, we saw this could be more than a hospitality event,” Quill said.Hannah Green won $1 million from sponsor Aon in 2021 for recording the best score on the toughest hole. Aon paid the same amount to the PGA Tour winner.Donald Miralle/Getty ImagesAon, the professional services company, sponsors a season-long competition that collects the best scores on the toughest hole each week on both the PGA and L.P.G.A. tours. It made a commitment in 2019 to pay the same $1 million prize to the male and female golfers who won the challenge.“It ties into our inclusion and diversity strategy,” said Jennifer Bell, chief executive of North America for Aon. “We also want to influence other sponsors since we’ve taken on this challenge.”At the end of last season, Bell awarded checks to Matthew Wolff, who turned pro in 2019, is ranked 45th in the world, and has won over $7 million; and Hannah Green, who turned pro in 2018, is ranked 31st in the world, but has won just over $2 million.“When I handed the $1 million check to Hannah Green last year, she had a smile on her face from ear to ear,” said Bell. “I said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ She said, ‘I think I’m going to buy a home’. She still lived with her mom.”The disparity in earnings between players on the men’s and women’s tours is enormous. Total prize money on the PGA Tour jumped to $427 million in 2022 from $367 million, a figure nearly five times that of the L.P.G.A. Tour. That has meant many top female golfers are living more modestly.Epson America, the United States subsidiary of the Japanese printer and imaging company, has created three additional benefits for players on the Epson Tour, guaranteeing minimum tournament purses of $200,000 and awarding a $10,000 stipend to the 10 players who graduate to the L.P.G.A. each year. It has also lowered entry fees.“They’re one of the biggest barriers,” said Meghan MacLaren, a winner on the Ladies European Tour who is now playing on the Epson Tour. “Before I add all the other stuff on, like flights, hotels, and travel, you’re looking at $10,000 for 20 events.”Increased prize money at the top of the L.P.G.A. or Epson Tour invariably trickles down to players who finish out of contention.“What we really liked about the sponsorship is we’re investing in the future of women’s golf,” said Keith Kratzberg, chief executive of Epson America.Patty Tavatanakit took home $465,000 when she won at Mission Hills as a rookie in 2021.Yong Teck Lim/Getty ImagesCorporate sponsors have also begun promoting the values they espouse in their companies with their athletes.When Lewis was pregnant in 2018, she worried about telling her sponsors. In the past, some sponsors hadn’t paid golfers who didn’t play a certain number of events, usually between 18 and 20 tournaments. Two of the most dominant players of their eras, Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa, both of whom were ranked No. 1 in the world, retired from golf in their primes to have children.For Lewis, it was different. “KPMG said, ‘We’re going to pay you whether you play your 20 events or not,’” she said. “We’re going to treat you like any employee at KPMG.”When she went public with the company’s promise, all but one of her sponsors also agreed to pay her in full.“That set the bar for other companies,” said Gerina Piller, a 15-year tour player who often travels with her son. “It paved another way to make it possible to chase our dream and be a mom and not get stuck with the decision of, do we play or do we stay home?” More

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      Lee Elder Paved the Way for Tiger Woods's Masters Dominance

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      Lee Elder forced golf forward by winning his way into the Masters tournament in 1975, the first Black player to do so, laying a path for Tiger Woods and others.How do we measure athletic greatness? By the number of big wins and unforgettable championships?Or by something less obvious but perhaps more profound: an athlete’s resolve to go against the grain and upend the status quo in both sport and society, even at the risk of personal harm?If the latter measure is as true a test as any, we must make room in the pantheon of the all-time greats for Lee Elder. An indefatigable African American golfer, he died on Sunday at age 87, nearly a half-century after he stood against the stultifying stain of racism and became the first Black golfer to play at the Masters, paving the way for no less than Tiger Woods.“He was the first,” said Woods, not long after he stunned the sports world by winning the Masters in 1997, at age 21. “He was the one I looked up to. Because of what he did, I was able to play here, which was my dream.”What a journey, what a life. The hard, tumultuous arc of sports in the back half of the 20th century — indeed the arc of American history during that time — can be traced through Elder.He was a Black man born in the Jim Crow South who taught himself to play golf on segregated courses and polished his trade on the barnstorming golf tour akin to baseball’s Negro leagues.He dreamed of making it to the biggest stage, but professional golf took its own sweet time while sports such as baseball, basketball and football slowly integrated. The Professional Golfers Association kept its Caucasian-only clause until 1961.Elder never wavered. He broke through on the PGA Tour in 1968, as a 34-year-old. In those days, with the battle for civil rights well underway, the Masters began receiving pressure to add at least one Black player to its field. In 1973, a group of 18 congressional representatives even petitioned the tournament for just that. Elder was among the top 40 money earners on tour and had played in multiple U.S. Opens and P.G.A. Championships — so why not Augusta National?But after choosing not to invite outstanding Black golfers such as Charlie Sifford during the 1960s, the tournament settled on a stringent requirement for its participants: victory at a PGA Tour event.Elder earned that at the 1974 Monsanto Open — the same Florida event where, six years earlier, he had been forced to change clothes in a parking lot because Black people were not allowed to use the country club locker room.Elder possessed an understated but firm resolve. He wasn’t quick to raise a fuss about racism, but he wasn’t afraid to speak up about it, either. “The Masters has never wanted a Black player, and they kept changing the rules to make it harder for Blacks,” he said, adding: “I got them off the hook by winning.”Elder served as a ceremonial starter for the Masters in 2021. He was cheered by Gary Player, in black, and Jack Nicklaus, right.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSince its inception in 1934, the Masters has dripped in the antebellum codes of the South. Held at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, on a former indigo plantation, the only African Americans allowed on the course were groundskeepers and caddies. Nobody described the Masters more truthfully than the Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray. The tournament, he wrote in 1969, was “as white as the Ku Klux Klan.”In the months leading up to the 1975 Masters, Elder was the target of multiple death threats. “Sometimes it was sent to the course where I was playing, sometimes it came to my house,” he said. “Stuff like, ‘You better watch behind trees,’ ‘You won’t make it to Augusta.’ It was bad stuff, but I expected it.”But on April 10, 1975, there he stood, at the first tee, surrounded by a gallery full of close friends, including the football star Jim Brown. When Elder smashed his tee shot straight down the fairway, he did not just make history at the Masters, he pried open the cloistered and often racist world of golf to new possibilities.Looking back at the contours of his career beyond 1975, one sees a consistent solidity. He won three more PGA Tour titles and then eight on the Senior Tour and represented the United States in the Ryder Cup. It will always be a great unknown — the heights Elder could have reached if the opportunity had been equal and he had been able to play PGA Tour events in his prime.We can say this much for certain: Elder fixed himself in the sports history firmament at the Masters in 1975. He will always remain there, a North Star for others to follow.Woods came along just over two decades later, winning the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes and announcing himself as the heir not just to Elder but to Jack Nicklaus, who won at Augusta six times. As Woods marched past a gallery of awe-struck fans on his way to receive the champion’s green jacket for the first of five times, he saw Elder, and the two embraced. Past met present, paving the future.And yet the road to equality in golf remains elusive. The sport was overwhelmingly white in Elder’s era and overwhelmingly white when Woods burst on the scene. It remains overwhelmingly white.The game is “still slacking quite a bit” when it comes to diversity, Cameron Champ, 26, whose mother is white and father is Black, said while speaking about Elder this week. Champ is one of the few players of African American heritage on tour and one of the game’s most vocal about the need to diversify.It took until this year — prodded by tumultuous nationwide protests over racism and police brutality in 2020 — for the Masters to truly give Elder his due.In April, aside Nicklaus and Gary Player, Elder sat at Augusta National’s first tee as an honorary starter for this year’s tournament. Tubes snaked into his nose to deliver oxygen. He was too hobbled to take a shot.A gallery of the tournament’s players stood nearby, paying proper respect to a golfer whose greatness extended far beyond the fairway. The cold, crisp morning had a reverent, unforgettable feel, recalled Champ, whose paternal grandfather fell for golf in part because of Elder and then taught the game to his grandson.But it took 46 years for golf to honor Elder at the Masters. Think about that.Why didn’t it happen in 1985, the 10th anniversary of his smashing past Augusta National’s color line? Or in 1995, 20 years after the fact? Or at any other time?Why must change always take so long? More