Rahm, Jon (1994- )

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      Jon Rahm Wins Masters, Surging Past Brooks Koepka

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      Rahm trailed Brooks Koepka by two strokes at the start of Sunday’s final round but surged as Koepka faltered to claim his second major tournament victory.AUGUSTA, Ga. — It was early for a debacle at the Masters Tournament — the first hole of the first round — but on Thursday morning, Jon Rahm’s internal speedometer had seemingly vanished. Accustomed to calibrating his putts just so, Rahm found his speed off, his ball sliding long and escaping right, before logging a double bogey.“Well,” Rahm thought as he headed to Augusta National Golf Club’s next tee, “I miss, I miss, I miss, I make,” paraphrasing Seve Ballesteros, the greatest Spanish golfer of all and himself a victim of a Masters putting misadventure. Rahm considered something else, too: Unlike Ballesteros, he had 71 holes to recover.He most certainly did.Rahm, the towering Spaniard who dominated the PGA Tour in 2023’s first months, won the Masters on Sunday, overcoming days of punishing humidity, plunging temperatures, green-saturating rains and tree-toppling winds, as well as that Thursday mess on No. 1, to claim his second career major championship. His victory, beneath an eggshell blue sky, came after he began the final round trailing Brooks Koepka, a four-time major winner who missed the Masters cut last April, by two strokes.Rahm ultimately won by four strokes, 12 under par for the tournament.“I’m looking at the scores, and I still think I have a couple more holes left to win,” Rahm said. “Can’t really say anything else. This one was for Seve. He was up there helping, and help he did.”Rahm, playing his shot from the fourth tee, had two birdies on the front nine in the final round.Rahm’s win kept at bay, at least for this month, a premier ambition of LIV Golf, the second-year league that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund bankrolled and then watched split men’s professional golf into embittered factions. Koepka has been one of the rebel circuit’s headliners and won a LIV event in Florida last week. Following it with a victory at Augusta National would have marked the first time a golfer had earned a major title as a LIV player. The league’s next chance will come in mid-May, at the P.G.A. Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, near Rochester, N.Y.But Rahm methodically extinguished the league’s 2023 bid in Augusta, where the 88-player field included 18 LIV golfers. Although the league had a robust showing behind Koepka and Phil Mickelson, whose sensational Sunday outing at seven under eventually vaulted him into a tie for second with Koepka, the tournament ended with Rahm, a PGA Tour stalwart, poised to select the menu for next year’s dinner of Masters champions.Mickelson, a three-time Masters winner, will presumably be there, too. Koepka will not, even after finishing the first three rounds with at least a share of a lead, showing a consistency — until it disappeared — that was all the more remarkable given the meteorological and scheduling turmoil.“I led for three rounds, and just didn’t do it on the last day,” Koepka said. “That’s it, plain and simple.”When Koepka made bogey on the sixth hole Sunday, after a drive past the green, a chip that zipped well past the pin and a par putt that scooted just past the hole, he also surrendered the lead.The par-5 eighth hole was a place where either man could gain ground: Both had made eagle there during the tournament. Koepka’s Sunday afternoon tee shot, though, came to rest on a stretch of pine straw, forcing a punch-out onto the fairway. Rahm guided his third shot onto the green, positioning him for a tap-in birdie that grew his advantage to two strokes.But there were charges toward the top of the leaderboard playing out elsewhere among the pines. When Koepka and Rahm each made bogey at No. 9, a cluster of aspiring contenders hovered much nearer than they had hours earlier. Rahm stood at 10 under, and Koepka at eight under, tied with Jordan Spieth, who started the round at one under. Another five players — Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Russell Henley, Cameron Young and Patrick Cantlay — were at six under or seven under.Rahm, left, and Koepka on the sixth green, where Koepka surrendered his lead with a bogey.The gap between Rahm and Koepka stayed at two strokes until the 12th hole, that wondrously botanical landmark in the heart of Amen Corner. The hole, a 155-yard par-3, is the shortest test at Augusta National. Koepka lifted his tee shot high, and then it plunged toward the turf just behind the green, though he avoided the bunker. His second shot did not quite reach the green, and his third cruised to the right and beyond the pin. He made a putt for bogey.That put Mickelson, 52, already done with his round, in a solo second place.Koepka birdied the 13th hole to pull even with Mickelson, but Rahm preserved his three-stroke advantage with a birdie, his first since No. 8.It did not last — because Rahm’s lead swelled to five strokes on the next hole. Rahm’s second shot, from near the tree line, plunked onto the green and then rolled in something approximating a semicircle until it stopped near the cup, setting up a putt for birdie. Koepka’s second shot also reached the green, but it rolled farther from the pin. A long try for birdie missed, and a much shorter one for par lipped out, sticking Koepka with a bogey, his fifth of the round.He came close to making a putt for eagle at the 15th before settling for a birdie there.Rahm led by four strokes with three holes to play. Koepka cut it to three with a majestic birdie after his tee shot cleared the water at No. 16, but his comeback possibilities were still narrowing quickly. It did not help that his ball, on his second shot at the 17th hole, went from a shadowed patch of east Georgia mud to where some spectators were sitting. He had made bogey on the hole near the end of the third round; he carded another as the tournament drew toward its conclusion, pushing Rahm’s advantage back to four strokes.Rahm and Koepka, on the eighth fairway, had each made eagle on the hole earlier in the tournament.Rahm, whose lone major victory had been at the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego, was virtually assured of a green jacket and, some months from now, a Masters trophy engraved with the signatures of every man he beat.Once he made his tournament-ending par putt on the 18th green surrounded by a thick, roaring gallery, he jubilantly lifted his arms skyward, clinched his fists and then briefly covered his face with his hands. He plucked his ball from the cup and tipped his hat.“Never thought I was going to cry by winning a golf tournament, but I got very close on that 18th hole,” he said.Even by the standards of a star who first reached the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking in 2020, Rahm has played especially well in recent months. In November, he won the DP World Tour Championship by two strokes. In January, he won two PGA Tour events, both with scores of 27 under par, and he captured the Genesis Invitational title in February.He stumbled in March, with a tie for 39th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational; a withdrawal from the Players Championship with a stomach illness; and a mediocre showing at a World Golf Championships match play tournament. But he insisted he was an unbothered “week-to-week guy,” content to play one event to the next without becoming all that mentally hemmed in by his booms or busts.“Every single tournament I go to, my plan is to win, and my mind-set doesn’t deviate from that,” he said last week.Until Sunday evening, he had never finished better than fourth at Augusta National. But for this year’s tournament, his seventh Masters appearance, he arrived with such a storehouse of knowledge of the course that he suggested it would be challenging to use in full.“I feel like it’s very difficult to apply everything you learn from each round here at Augusta National,” Rahm, on the sixth hole, said.“I feel like it’s very difficult to apply everything you learn from each round here at Augusta National,” he said.He added: “Obviously, the more you play, the more comfortable you get with a little bit of the lag putting out here, I would say. It can be very deceiving to understand some of the breaks and some of the speeds on the putts. You know, a little bit of learning and things like that, but at the end of the day, it’s a golf course where you have to come out here and play good golf, right? It’s plain and simple. There’s no trick to it. The best player wins, and that’s what you’ve got to do.”He did it, on what would have been Ballesteros’s 66th birthday. More

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      Photographs From Sunday’s Final Round at the Masters

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      After days of rain and dark clouds, the final round was sunny and clear with nothing but blue skies and green fairways providing a brilliant backdrop for Jon Rahm’s win.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The weather on Saturday at the Masters Tournament threw the schedule into chaos as rain and wind drove golfers off the course at Augusta National Golf Club in mid-afternoon when conditions became too poor to continue play. That meant Sunday — usually the start of the final round — began with the finish of the third round before advancing to the big finish: Jon Rahm capturing his first green jacket and second major tournament win.The excellent weather on Sunday provided a crystal clear backdrop for the highs and lows of the final round at the Masters, the first men’s golf major tournament of the year.Viktor Hovland was tied for the lead after the first round and finished tied for seventh at six under par.Xander Schauffele shot below par in three of his four rounds, including one under on both Saturday and Sunday.The tournament calls its attendees patrons rather than fans.Tiger Woods made the cut but withdrew from the tournament before third-round play resumed on Sunday following its suspension Saturday.Russell Henley tied for fourth after shooting under par in each of his final three rounds.Rahm celebrated his win with his wife, Kelley Cahill, and oldest son, Kepa. More

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      At the Masters, Brooks Koepka Holds the Lead and Tiger Woods Withdraws

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      Woods exited the tournament during the third round that finished around noon on Sunday. Koepka held a two-stroke lead over Jon Rahm head into the final round.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods withdrew on Sunday from the Masters Tournament, where he was in last place and openly struggling to overcome the agony of years of injuries.Augusta National Golf Club announced Woods’s withdrawal 75 minutes before the resumption of the third round, which was suspended Saturday because of bad weather. Woods had completed seven holes of the round and was six over par, bringing his tournament score to nine over after he had made his 23rd consecutive Masters cut, tying a record shared by Fred Couples and Gary Player.In a post on Twitter on Sunday morning, after Augusta National’s announcement, Woods attributed his withdrawal to “reaggravating my plantar fasciitis,” a condition he has dealt with for months. In November, it led Woods to skip competing in an event in the Bahamas that he hosts.Woods’s decision at the Masters came on a far more prominent stage, and it marked the second time in less than a year that he withdrew from a major tournament. Last May, he left the P.G.A. Championship after the third round, when he had shot a nine-over-par 79. He skipped the U.S. Open and then missed the cut at the British Open.Although Woods, 47, has long grappled with injuries, he has especially struggled since a car wreck in February 2021 that nearly cost him a leg. He made his return to tournament golf at the Masters last April, when he finished 47th, and has repeatedly said he expects to enter only a handful of events each year.“It has been tough and will always be tough,” Woods said on Tuesday at Augusta National, where he has won the Masters five times, most recently in 2019. “The ability and endurance of what my leg will do going forward will never be the same. I understand that. That’s why I can’t prepare and play as many tournaments as I like, but that’s my future and that’s OK. I’m OK with that.”For Woods, whose wreck left him with open fractures of the tibia and fibula of his right leg, the challenge of the last year in golf has been less about his swing and more about the rigors of walking 72 holes over four days, especially at a notoriously hilly course like Augusta National. After he missed the cut at St. Andrews in July, he said it had been “hard just to walk and play 18 holes.”“People have no idea what I have to go through and the hours of the work on the body, pre and post, each and every single day to do what I just did,” he said after his British Open ended. Later in 2022, he said, without disclosing more details, that his year had included undergoing “a few more procedures because of playing.”The next major tournament is scheduled to start on May 18, when the P.G.A. Championship will be played at Oak Hill Country Club, near Rochester, N.Y. Woods did not say on Sunday whether he intended to be in the field; in February, he said he would “hopefully” appear in all four majors this year.Although poor weather had forced three suspensions of play during this Masters, tournament officials appeared confident that the competition would end, as long planned, on Sunday. When the third round concluded shortly before noon on Sunday, with the Masters field down to 53 players, Brooks Koepka had a two-stroke lead over Jon Rahm.Koepka, who was 11 under par, sputtered slightly on the back nine in the third round, including at No. 17, where he three-putted for the first time during this tournament. Rahm also encountered trouble on the back nine, making bogey on two holes.Viktor Hovland, who barely missed a birdie putt on the 18th green at the end of his third round, was at eight under. More

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      Sunday’s Masters Plan: End the Third Round, Play the Fourth, Crown a Winner. Maybe Dry Out, Too.

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      Plus, Fred Couples sets a Masters record.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Sometime on Sunday evening — weather permitting, because everything during this Masters Tournament seems to be like that — Brooks Koepka or Jon Rahm or one of 52 other players will get to wear the jacket they actually want to during this trip to Augusta National Golf Club.It’s green.Saturday’s weather threw the tournament into carefully managed havoc, with the third round scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Sunday. Koepka, Rahm and Sam Bennett were to try to finish the seventh hole, which they were playing in the 3 p.m. hour on Saturday when conditions became too poor to continue. If all goes according to Augusta National’s plan, the final round will tee off at 12:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, with the 54 players paired up and playing from the first and 10th tees.Augusta National, seeking to avoid its first Monday Masters finish since 1983, used a similar approach in 2019’s fourth round, when weather led groups of three to start from two tees.Tee times, of course, are only part of Augusta’s weather war plan. The club also has a highly sophisticated, sort-of-secret weapon: a vast, subterranean system known as SubAir that draws moisture away from the golf course’s greens and fairways. The system has many functions, including pumping fresh air to assist with the root structure of the grass. But when heavy rainfall strikes, it can siphon rainwater away from the central areas of the course to places on the property that are more likely to be out of play.Players love the SubAir system because it can keep the speed of a course’s devilish greens consistent despite a downpour, as well as make fairways drier, which leads to harder landing surfaces and longer drives off the tee. The system emits a low hum, a sound the top players have come to appreciate.“They just turn it on,” Viktor Hovland marveled last year, “and overnight it’s a completely different golf course.”Fred Couples — yes, 63-year-old Fred Couples — made the cut.Fred Couples acknowledged the crowd on the 18th green during the continuation of the weather-delayed second round on Saturday.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesLet’s be honest: It is virtually certain that Fred Couples will not win the Masters this year. He might even finish last, or close to it. But Fred Couples, the 1992 champion, is still in the field, which is more than some of his (much) younger counterparts can say.At 63, he is the oldest player ever to make the Masters cut.“There really isn’t a secret,” Couples said. “Everyone loves this place. That doesn’t mean you’re going to play well. If I hit it really solid, I’m a good iron player.”Couples, who has lifetime playing privileges at the Masters thanks to his 1992 win, last played the third and fourth rounds in 2018, when he finished in a tie for 38th. His last top-10 finish came in 2010, when he placed sixth.“I am excited to make the cut,” he said. “That’s why I come here. The last four years have been really mediocre golf — maybe one year I was semi-close to making the cut — but that’s my objective, and I did it. It’s not like, ‘Ha, ha, ha. Now I can screw around and play 36 holes for fun.’ I’m going to try and compete. Play a good pairing with some younger guys and watch them play.”Indeed, he knows he will compete only so much. He is fine with that.“I can’t compete with Viktor Hovland or Jon Rahm or anybody, but I can compete with myself, and that’s really why I come,” he said.A few notable scores so far in the interrupted third round.Brooks Koepka hit a bunker shot to the second green on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThere is still plenty of third-round golf to play, but the round has not delivered as much of the movement that players want: Only 11 improved their scores. Three — Patrick Cantlay, Matt Fitzpatrick and Sungjae Im — picked up three strokes. Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion, improved by two, and Koepka brightened his score by one.Phil Mickelson remains at four under par for the tournament after bogeying two of the last three holes before play was suspended on Saturday. Justin Rose started the round at four under, got to six under and was back to four under when everyone headed indoors.Dustin Johnson, who won the tournament in 2020 with the lowest score in the competition’s history, is six over for the round, putting him in a tie for 51st at five over. More

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      Masters Leaderboard: Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka Tied on Top

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      Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka all shot 65s in the opening round of the first Masters of the LIV Golf era.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The gallery was thick from the start, as it almost always is at Augusta National Golf Club’s first tee. And, as it almost always is when Tiger Woods is lurking at a Masters Tournament, nearly no one was there for the rest of his group, Viktor Hovland or Xander Schauffele.They probably should have been — especially for Hovland, the only man of the three never to have won a major tournament or finish as a runner-up. By day’s end, after all, he would be in a three-way tie for the lead.“If you get a little too cocky and you want to push a few spots that you probably shouldn’t, it will punish you very quickly,” Hovland, who scored a seven-under-par 65, said of the course. He is tied for the lead with Jon Rahm and the LIV Golf player Brooks Koepka. “So you know a good score is out there, but you can’t really force it. You’ve just got to let it happen, and if you have some makable putts, you’ve got to make them, and then you can get into a rhythm.”But, he warned, “It’s one of those things, you push too hard, and it will backfire.”He plainly learned plenty in his first three Masters appearances. But before a waterlogged weather system threatened to turn Augusta National’s hills into the most emerald of slip-and-slides, especially on Saturday, the course was modestly less menacing than usual. Winds were calm, when they rustled the pines at all, and punishing humidity kept the course soft.Hovland closed his round with four straight pars.With those conditions, Hovland was almost certainly not going to end Thursday as a runaway solo leader, and he did not. Rahm, who endured a frustrating March after winning three PGA Tour events in January and February, overcame a double bogey on the first hole to also finish at 65. And Koepka, who won a LIV Golf event over the weekend, birdied the last two holes to earn a share of the lead, lending the second-year circuit a dose of the credibility that it might require and crave in equal measure.“It’s full focus on this and trying to walk out of here with a green jacket,” said Koepka, one of the headliners of the LIV circuit funded by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to considerable condemnation and skepticism.Koepka, a four-time major tournament winner, drew attention Thursday evening from the tournament’s Competition Committee, whose chairman said that officials had “questioned” Koepka’s caddie and others “about a possible incident on No. 15.”“All involved were adamant that no advice was given or requested,” the chairman, James B. Hyler Jr., said in a statement. “Consequently, the committee determined that there was no breach of the rules.”Beyond Koepka, LIV, whose 54-hole competitions provoked wide debate over whether its players would be ready for the rigors of 72-hole major tournaments, had a mixed day. Cameron Smith, the reigning British Open champion, opened with a tee shot that stopped closer to the ninth fairway than the first. When sundown came, though, he had signed for a two-under-par 70. Phil Mickelson, a three-time Masters champion, was one under par, as was Dustin Johnson, the 2020 winner.Brooks Koepka viewed his early tee time for Friday, with rain in the forecast, as an advantage.But Bubba Watson, a two-time Masters winner who has missed Augusta National’s cut only once in his career, bogeyed or worse on six holes to score a 77. Louis Oosthuizen put together a 76, and Bryson DeChambeau, who had a six-shot U.S. Open victory less than three years ago, finished at 74.Still, for all of the embittered theatrics that have seeped into men’s golf as LIV stormed onto the scene last year, much about the inaugural Masters of the LIV era seemed like most any other one.Fans — pardon us, patrons — clutched plastic cups that sweated more conspicuously than some of the players. A woman dozed at the base of a tree close to the 11th fairway, and just a bit deeper into Amen Corner, Larry Mize, the 1987 champion playing his final Masters, approached the 12th tee box to gentle applause. Woods, the 15-time major winner was, as usual, an attraction, by design or happenstance.“You’re just in time: You can see Tiger tee off,” a gallery guard at the No. 7 crossway told an elderly man sporting a hat from the 2007 P.G.A. Championship. (Fittingly, Woods won that tournament.)He saw Woods, yes, his journey to a two-over-par 74. But he also glimpsed the handiwork of Hovland and Schauffele, who would end at four under on a day when he felt he had exacting command of his ball.Hovland’s lurch toward the top of the leaderboard began on the second hole, the 575-yard par-5 that played as the easiest hole at last year’s Masters. His tee shot thundered to the middle of the fairway, leaving him about 209 yards from the pin, by his estimate. He gripped his 6-iron and expected his ball to crash around the green’s front edge.Tiger Woods had five bogeys and three birdies in his round.It went much farther, landing close enough for Hovland, who has sometimes struggled to conquer the intricacies of the short game, to putt for eagle. He later birdied five holes, including the newly lengthened 13th, and had no bogeys.“Around here, there’s never just a normal golf shot except maybe on the par-3s because everything is all different lies,” said Patrick Reed, the 2018 winner.“Because of that, you have to have full control over what your club’s doing, especially what you’re trying to do through impact,” added Reed, a LIV player who shot a 71 on Thursday. “I feel like Viktor has always done that really well. If he gets going and his putter starts working, he’s going to go out and do what he’s doing on this golf course right now.”Rahm summoned similarly consequential magic on the eighth hole, the one christened Yellow Jasmine that demands 570 yards.Rahm stood in the tee box and hit, in his estimate, “about as hard a drive as I can.” He figured he had about 267 yards left to the hole and pictured hitting a draw 4-iron. The right bounce, he thought, might position him around the back of the green.Then he hit it lower than he wanted.“It carried about 8 on and obviously on a perfect line and released all the way to 3 feet,” he said. “I would hope I would get that close, but being realistic, it doesn’t usually happen that often. I’m happy it did. I mean, it was a really good swing, and for that to end up that close is a huge bonus.”Hovland shot par or better on every hole.Eagle. The leaders will take a two-stroke advantage over Cameron Young and Jason Day, who were tied for fourth, into Friday.Augusta National may not be so relatively easy in the days ahead. The tournament’s official forecast warned that rain would threaten for much of Friday, when thunderstorms could upend afternoon play. Saturday’s outlook was even more miserable, with up to two inches of rain and wind gusts of 25 miles per hour expected.Koepka said his 8:18 a.m. Eastern time appointment at No. 1 — 30 minutes earlier than initially planned — could be his greatest advantage on Friday.“I think I might be able to squeak out a few more holes than everybody else before it starts dumping,” he said.Plenty of people will be chasing.Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked golfer and last year’s Masters winner, missed a birdie putt at No. 18 and ended his day at four under. Rory McIlroy shot a 72, the first time since 2018 he had played a first round at Augusta to par or better.The cut will happen Friday evening, weather permitting, with the line being the top-50, plus ties, leaving DeChambeau, Watson and Woods more vulnerable than most after their showings in the first round.“Most of the guys are going low today,” Woods said. “This was the day to do it.” More

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      A New Twist for the Tradition-Bound Masters: The LIV Golf Era

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      LIV, Saudi Arabia’s breakaway league, split men’s professional golf. Now, the drama is coming to one of the sport’s most hallowed stages.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The mystery started in earnest last spring and lasted until autumn’s twilight. But Phil Mickelson — among the most famous frontmen for LIV Golf, the league bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — insists that he believed he would be allowed to play the 2023 Masters Tournament, which opens Thursday.Never mind any discomfort, or how on-course rivalries had transformed into long-distance furies tinged by politics, power, pride and money. No, Mickelson reasoned, tradition would prevail at Augusta National Golf Club, surely among sports’ safest wagers.“The history of this tournament, the history of the majors, is about bringing the best players together, and it really needs to rise above any type of golf ecosystem disruption,” Mickelson, a three-time Masters winner, said in an interview last month.“I wasn’t really worried,” said Mickelson, who spent the 2022 Masters in a self-imposed sporting exile after he effectively downplayed Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses. But, he allowed, “there was talk” of exclusion from one of golf’s most revered events.Augusta National extinguished the talk on Dec. 20: If a golfer qualified for the Masters through one of its familiar pathways, like being a past champion, his 2023 invitation would be in the mail.The club’s choice will infuse its grounds through at least Sunday, when the tournament is scheduled to conclude, weather permitting. All of the customary narratives that surround a major tournament are bubbling: Will Scottie Scheffler become the first repeat winner in more than two decades? Might Rory McIlroy finally complete the career Grand Slam? Can Jon Rahm regain his dominant winter form? And, as ever, what will Tiger Woods do?But an undercurrent of ambition, curiosity and gentility-cloaked discord is present, too.Dustin Johnson, Mickelson and Harold Varner III, all LIV golf athletes, on the 18th green during a practice round on Tuesday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFor LIV, the competition will be a breakthrough if one of its players dons the winner’s green jacket. For the PGA Tour, the Masters is an opportunity to showcase that its 72-hole approach to an ancient game is still king. And for Augusta National, the tournament is an opportunity to depict itself as skeptically above golf’s chaotic fray.“At the Champions Dinner, I would not have known that anything was going on in the world of professional golf other than the norm,” Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, said Wednesday, the day after the traditional gathering of past Masters winners.He added: “So I think, and I’m hopeful, that this week might get people thinking in a little bit different direction and things will change.”It was virtually certain that this week would not descend into open brawling, and it has not. Some players have complained about a news media hyperfocus on any potential tensions — and acknowledged that they, too, had wondered about the vibe and contemplated the stakes for their tours.Cameron Smith, at No. 6 the highest-ranked LIV player, said PGA Tour players had greeted him with hugs and handshakes. Asked what, exactly, he had anticipated, he replied: “I wasn’t really sure, to be honest.”He seemed more certain that LIV could use a strong showing on the leaderboards around Augusta National’s hallowed stage.“I think it’s just important for LIV guys to be up there because I think we need to be up there,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of chatter about these guys don’t play real golf; these guys don’t play real golf courses. For sure, I’ll be the first one to say the fields aren’t as strong. I’m the first one to say that, but we’ve still got a lot of guys up there that can play some really serious golf.”Cameron Smith, LIV’s highest-ranked player, said PGA Tour golfers had greeted him with hugs and handshakes.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMcIlroy, seemingly approaching sainthood in the eyes of PGA Tour executives for his steadfast defense of their circuit, said the Masters was “way bigger” than golf’s big spat and that he relished the opportunity to go up against 18 LIV players who are among the world’s finest golfers. Being around them again, he suggested, can build rapport, though he acknowledged restored proximity was not a guarantee of perpetual harmony.“It’s a very nuanced situation and there’s different dynamics,” McIlroy said. Referring to Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, the LIV stars and major winners, he added: “You know, it’s OK to get on with Brooks and D.J. and maybe not get on with some other guys that went to LIV, right?”For its part, Augusta National, whose private membership roster is believed to include at least two former secretaries of state, has sought to tamp down theatrics.Groupings for Thursday and Friday are about the most anodyne possible, at least in the PGA Tour vs. LIV context. Woods and Bryson DeChambeau, who recently suggested that Woods had all but excommunicated him, will not have a reunion at the first tee. Fred Couples, a PGA Tour loyalist who called LIV’s Sergio Garcia a “clown” and Mickelson a “nutbag,” is scheduled to play alongside Russell Henley and Alex Noren. McIlroy is grouped with Sam Burns and Tom Kim.And Ridley said that Augusta National had not invited Greg Norman, the LIV commissioner, to the club, where the leaders of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour have held court in recent days.“The primary issue and the driver there is that I want the focus this week to be on the Masters competition,” Ridley said. He said he believed Norman had attended the tournament twice in the last decade, once as a radio commentator.Ridley also sidestepped a query about whether Augusta National had become complicit in “sportswashing” Saudi Arabia’s image.“I certainly have a general understanding of the term,” Ridley said. “I think, you know, it’s for others to decide exactly what that means. These were personal decisions of these players, which I, you know, at a high level, don’t necessarily agree with.”“I want the focus this week to be on the Masters competition,” Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, said.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWith tournament play scheduled to begin Thursday morning, the week’s emphasis is rapidly shifting toward the competition itself. The event’s American television broadcasters appear unlikely to dwell on off-course subjects unless they must.“We’re not going to put our heads in the sand,” said Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports, which will broadcast the third and fourth rounds on Saturday and Sunday. “Having said that, unless it really affects the story that’s taking place on the golf course, we’re not going to go out of our way to cover it, and I’m not sure there’s anything that we could add to the story.”ESPN, which will air the tournament’s first two rounds, has suggested it is even less interested in golf’s geopolitical soap opera. Curtis Strange, the two-time U.S. Open champion who is now a commentator, said he didn’t “see us mentioning the Roman numerals at all.”“We have to give respect to the Masters Tournament,” he said. “The only way I could ever see anything coming up — and not even mentioning LIV — but some of these players haven’t played a lot of competitive golf. So how sharp can they be?”LIV golfers have said that they will be prepared for the rigors of the Masters, even though they have been playing 54-hole events, instead of 72, at courses that some doubt will have them ready for Augusta’s challenges.That dynamic will make this year’s tournament more of a proving ground than usual. But there is always next year: When Augusta National released its Masters entry criteria for 2024 on Wednesday, there were no changes that immediately threatened LIV players.Mickelson’s bet was still proving safe. More

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      LIV Players Excluded From World Golf Rankings For Now Or Forever?

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      The Official World Golf Ranking is a dividing line between LIV Golf and the sport’s establishment. Since the metric helps determine access to major tournaments, the argument is hardly academic.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Since he stepped into a tee box near London last June, Dustin Johnson has earned at least $36 million in prize money, the most of any golfer in the world.He has also seen his standing in the Official World Golf Ranking plunge, from No. 15 to No. 69.Less than three years after his Masters Tournament victory, Johnson is hardly playing poorly. But his collapse in the ranking — one he says he no longer bothers to monitor — is a calculable consequence of his choice to leave the PGA Tour for LIV Golf, the league bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund that debuted last year.LIV has gleefully rocked men’s golf and reveled in challenging some of the old order. The circuit, though, is finding that its independent streak can go only so far, and it is seeking at least some favor and special dispensations from the industry’s most hidebound gatekeepers.Those allowances have not come yet. LIV asked to be included in the ranking system about nine months ago, but executives are still weighing its application, and players like Johnson are slipping in the formula-based standings since they are appearing in few, if any, events that award ranking points. In golf, ranking is not merely a matter of ego; for many players, it affects the values of sponsorship deals and serves as a crucial gateway for entry to major tournaments such as the Masters, which will begin Thursday at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.“They need to do something to figure it out because, obviously, we have great players playing over here, and we’re not getting any points for events, and we should be,” said Johnson, who plays on the LIV circuit with the past major champions Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Cameron Smith, who, at No. 6, is the highest-ranked LIV player.“They just need to figure out a system that’s fair for everyone,” Johnson, who spent 135 weeks at the No. 1, said in an interview last month, when he figured his play these days warranted a position around No. 5.A potential affiliation between LIV and the O.W.G.R., which a handful of elite tours and governing bodies control, is being debated privately. But whenever a resolution comes, its ripple effects could shape LIV’s allure to players and the majesty of the Masters and the other major men’s tournaments: the British Open, the P.G.A. Championship and the U.S. Open.LIV and its supporters contend that if the league’s players are routinely excluded from major tournaments because of a spat over rankings, the reputations of golf’s pre-eminent tests will erode and, in turn, public interest in the competitions will fade. The Saudi league’s critics, though, are skeptical that LIV’s 54-hole, no-cut tournaments should be readily compared to the 72-hole events that are commonplace on established circuits like the PGA Tour.Players earn ranking points each time they compete in eligible events over a rolling two-year period. So as the months have progressed and LIV golfers have appeared in fewer sanctioned competitions, their banked points have declined, and they have slid down the list.Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open winner, arrived at last year’s Masters at No. 19. He has fallen to No. 155. Koepka, a four-time major tournament winner who prevailed at LIV’s event in Florida over the weekend, missed the Masters cut last spring but was No. 16 afterward. A former world No. 1, Koepka is now No. 118. Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters champion, played Augusta last year ranked 31st; he now stands at No. 70.“I think a lot of people are against them having world ranking points,” Jon Rahm, the current third-ranked player and an occasionally fearsome critic of the formula, said late last year. “I’m not necessarily against it, but there should be adjustments,” maybe, he suggested, by prorating the available points for 54-hole events.“I think a lot of people are against them having world ranking points,” Jon Rahm said about LIV’s players.Mark Baker/Associated PressBut Rahm, a PGA Tour star, added of LIV: “They do have some incredible players. To say that Dustin wasn’t one of the best players this year would be a mistake.”Bickering over golf rankings is not quite as old as the sport itself, but it hardly started with LIV’s founding.The system that became the O.W.G.R. debuted in 1986 as the Sony Ranking. Ostensibly created to sort the planet’s best golfers — the PGA Tour money list had been regarded as the most sensible measure of a player’s fortunes — the ranking was initially seen in some quarters as a glossy way for a powerful agent to elevate the profiles of his firm’s clients. There was even a derisive nickname for the system: the “Phony Ranking.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Views eventually softened, and now there is little mistaking the ranking’s widespread, if sometimes begrudging, acceptance, or its links to the golf establishment. Its governing board includes the leaders of the P.G.A. of America, the R&A, the U.S. Golf Association and some of the world’s most elite tours.The O.W.G.R. has said almost nothing publicly about LIV’s application. By the end of last year, though, the ranking’s technical committee had completed a review of LIV’s application, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential process. The milestone shifted the application to another committee, this one including representatives of the major tournaments, to render a verdict.The technical committee concluded that the new circuit easily cleared some of the standards for inclusion, such as sponsorship from a tour that may propose new members (in this case, the Asian Tour) and a commitment to abide by golf’s playing rules. But the panel, according to people involved in the process, flagged what some members regarded as serious shortcomings in LIV’s model, which some thought made it a “closed shop.”Officials fretted over the absence of an open qualifying school — tournaments that can allow players to join a circuit — before the start of LIV seasons, although league officials have argued that their “promotions” event suffices. And beyond the 54-hole nature of LIV tournaments, there were widespread worries about the league’s reliance on 48-player fields, which are far smaller than typical for professional circuits, and concerns that LIV golfers’ ownership stakes around the league could affect performances. Even now, skeptics note, LIV has not been around long enough to participate in the system.But LIV executives and players have focused on a particular lifeline: that the ranking’s most senior leaders have absolute discretion over admissions, including the authority to set aside any eligibility guideline.The major tournaments that use the rankings as an entry method have similar powers and are not obligated to employ the formula in the future, but no organizer has even hinted at plans to abandon the ranking. Unless Augusta National, for instance, alters its protocol, many of the 18 LIV players in the Masters field this year could be left out as soon as 2024.A handful face far less risk. In Augusta, many golfers and executives anticipate that past Masters winners will maintain their traditional lifetime privileges to play the tournament. But less renowned LIV players know that this turn at Augusta National could be their last — unless, for example, they finish in the top 12 this year.“It amps up the pressure,” said Harold Varner III, who made his Masters debut last year but said he had accepted the possibility of being left out of future major fields. (“My goal over all through all of this was, what was best for golf — and getting paid,” he said.)“It amps up the pressure,” Harold Varner III said of potentially being excluded from future major tournaments.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEven players who have proven capable of winning majors have confessed to fears that they could eventually be left out of some of golf’s most venerated events.“Augusta is one of the places where you want to play every year,” said Smith, who, if the rules remain unchanged, will qualify for the Masters through at least 2027 by virtue of his British Open win last July but currently has no guarantees beyond that. “Until these rankings get sorted, it’s definitely going to be in the back of my mind for sure.”He has, though, often resisted the urge to lash out in personal terms, even as his ambitions of reaching No. 1 have darkened for now.“I made my bed, and I’m happy to sleep in it,” Smith, who was reportedly promised at least $100 million in guaranteed money if he joined LIV, said recently on an Arizona patio. “But at the same time, I think there’s an argument for coming to a golf tournament and knowing who you have to beat.”If Smith, or one of his LIV colleagues, wins at Augusta in the coming days, his ranking will surely soar. The Masters, after all, is an eligible tournament. More

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      Postcard From Phoenix: A Day Inside Sport’s Party Vortex

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      SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The wind was whipping like a blender working overtime on a margarita Thursday morning, and the more than 17,000 people bellied up to the 16th hole at the Phoenix Open acted as if it were last call.If you want cemetery-like quiet, kneel politely before the golf gods at the Masters’ “Amen Corner.”This is the People’s Open, and the 16th is the loudest hole on the rowdiest stop on the PGA Tour. Jon Rahm, a U.S. Open champion, says the decibels have risen exponentially from year to year.The 16th hole at the Phoenix Open is the loudest hole on the rowdiest stop on the PGA Tour.“Very few sporting events in the world can comfortably happen in the same week as the Super Bowl and still have the impact that they have like this one,” Rahm said. “With that said, I don’t think it’s everybody’s favorite — I think either you love it or hate it. There’s no in between. With my case, I love it.”The tournament is an annual destination for fans who refuse to bow to stuffy golf etiquette and, for that reason, the fairways at the T.P.C. Scottsdale course are lined with younger and rowdier attendees than anywhere else in golf. With the Super Bowl in town, golf’s party capital was not only supercharged, but it also helped the 91-year-old tournament sell out its second- and third-round tickets for the first time.Nate Orr, a lawyer, traveled from Kansas City with his friends Jared Kenealy and Micheal Lawrence. They’re Chiefs season-ticket holders who sprung for Super Bowl seats on Sunday, but found themselves in a box on the edge of the 16th green, where they watched golf balls ricochet off the panels beneath them and trickle into sand traps.Dive Deeper Into Super Bowl LVIIThe God of Sod: George Toma, 94, has been a groundskeeper for all 57 Super Bowls. On Sunday, his perfectionism will be on display for millions of people who will have no idea who he is or how he suffers for his work.Philadelphia Swagger: After surviving a disastrous introductory news conference, an ill-chosen flower analogy and his “Beat Dallas” motivational shirt, Nick Sirianni has transformed the Eagles, and maybe himself.Inside a Kansas City Oasis: Big Charlie’s Saloon is a South Philadelphia bar with a bit of a conundrum: how to celebrate Kansas City’s Super Bowl berth without drawing the ire of locals.Halftime Show: The nearly four-year gap between Rihanna’s live performances will close when she takes the stage at the Super Bowl. During her hiatus, the stakes for her return have only grown.“Bucket list stuff,” said Lawrence, an executive at a nonprofit.From left: Jared Kenealy, Nate Orr, Stephanie Orr and Micheal Lawrence inside their suite on the 16th green.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe crowd was just as rough on the celebrities who competed in the Pro-Am on Wednesday, including the Olympic great Michael Phelps.Tony Finau, the world No. 13, was greeted like a gladiator at the so-called coliseum hole after knocking his tee-shot 16 inches from the flag. When he sunk the gimme for a birdie, the crowd roared as exuberantly as they had in Arrowhead Stadium last month when Harrison Butker booted the game-winning field goal that landed Kansas City in Sunday’s Super Bowl.Rory McIlroy was booed for merely backing off his ball as the wind gusted.When Jordan Spieth, ranked No. 17, yanked his five-or-so-foot birdie putt, however, the boos reached a crescendo. How to describe the crowd’s ardor? Imagine Eagles fans greeting Chip Kelly’s return. It was that venomous.The Phoenix Open sold out tickets for the tournament’s second and third rounds this year, a first.Autograph-seekers waited on the 16th tee box during the hole-in-one competition on Wednesday.The crowd skews younger than at any other PGA Tour event, in part because of the access to pros.Chants of “Go Chiefs” and “Fly Eagles Fly” were part of the tournament’s already-booming soundtrack as football fans were among those in the long lines of people waiting to secure seats in the Coliseum’s general-admission grandstand.The crowd was just as rough on the celebrities who competed in the Pro-Am on Wednesday. The Olympic great Michael Phelps, the retired Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald and Carli Lloyd, a former soccer star of the United States Women’s National Team, were announced at the tee box with D.J. music, but they were razzed and roared at as they made their way to the green.The pro golfer’s bags in the “bag room.”Hideki Matsuyama dove to the ground to catch a scorecard that was blown out of his hand on the 12th green.Name another hole where it can rain suds and thunder beer cans as it did last year when Sam Ryder aced the 16th in the third-round to set off a delirious celebration that halted play for 15 minutes so volunteers could pick up the cans.Alas, aluminum cans inside the Coliseum were banned this week and replaced with plastic cups.Where else are gallery members enlisted to remove a boulder as they were in 1999 so Tiger Woods could get a clear shot at the green. It took a dozen of them, and the blessing of a rules official, but after a few heave-hos Woods got his birdie.Enclosed from tee to green by a grandstand that reaches three stories, an army of aggressive and clever beer vendors helped lubricate the crowd on Thursday.“I got a Coors with your name on it — What’s your name?” went one’s singsong mantra.Unlike the golfers they came to watch, patrons of the People’s Open do not even have to make it through all 18 holes. The Birds Nest, a party tent near the course’s entrance, starts throbbing in late afternoon as tournament goers get ready to dance into the night to performances by Machine Gun Kelly and the Chainsmokers.Yes, the Phoenix Open has its charms. Ask McIlroy.“If I wasn’t a player and I wanted to come to one PGA Tour event,” he said after shooting 2-over in his opening round, “this would probably be the one that I’d want to come to.”The 16th green from the top level of the grandstands. More