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    Ivor Robson, Golf’s Celebrated Voice at British Open, Dies at 83

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    For four decades he announced the names of players — Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and more — before they teed off. He rarely took a break.At the British Open, a Scotsman named Ivor Robson became one of the most distinctive and revered voices in golf by saying little. Called a starter, he stood at a lectern near the first tee at each round of that major championship, where his job was simple: to introduce each player.“On the tee, from U.S.A., Jack Nicklaus,” he would say in his slightly high-pitched, singsong brogue.Or, “On the tee, from Northern Ireland, Rory McIlroy.”Once he was at his post, around 6:30 in the morning, he didn’t leave until every golfer had teed off — 156 in all in each of the first two rounds. He did not eat or drink anything before he took his position or for the next nine or 10 hours.Nor would he take a bathroom break, at a “comfort station,” even if he had time between introductions.“No input,” he would say, “no output.”He explained his on-course restraint to Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated in 1999: “I don’t want cups of water spilling over. I don’t want food around. I don’t have time to excuse myself. There’s no time!”When he was done for the day and back at his hotel, he would call room service for his only meal of the day.Mr. Robson, who retired from starter work in 2015, died on Oct. 15. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, announced the death but did not give a cause or say where he died. He was 83 and lived in Moffat, Dumfriesshire, in Scotland.Mr. Robson, who was born in England in 1940, was a golfer himself, having competed on the Scottish pro tour in the 1960s and ’70s and worked as a club professional in Scotland.He began his four-decade run at the Open Championship, as the event is officially known, in 1975, at Carnoustie, Scotland, at the invitation of the golf shaft company that hired the tournament’s starters. He went on to perform the role at the other links courses where the Open is played, like St. Andrews, Turnberry, Royal Birkdale and Muirfield.“Nobody told me how to do it,” he told the golf website Bunkered this year. “I just had to work it out for myself when I started in 1975. ‘What do I do here?’ Just keep it simple, where are they from, the name of the player, and let them go.”Mr. Robson endured heat, chill and rain and said he did not eat, drink or take bathroom breaks while on the job as a starter.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesMr. Robson’s job was similar to that of public address announcers at baseball games. But they work from protected press boxes. Mr. Robson endured heat, chill and rain while always formally dressed in his blazer and tie. (A sought-after announcer for 41 years, he also played the starter role at other golf events, including the DP World Tour in Europe.)“That voice — that smile in his eyes and that lilt in his voice — was unmistakable,” Mike Tirico, an NBC sportscaster who anchored British Open coverage for ESPN and ABC, said in a phone interview. “If you mentioned his name to a player, they’d imitate how he pronounced their names, with his inflections.”Mr. Robson would often chat with players before they took their swings and witnessed them face pressure, especially in starting their final round on a Sunday.“You can see the tension,” he said in a video interview with Golfing World magazine in 2019. “They’re not listening to you. They’re speaking to you, but you know they’re not really sure what to say. The club head is shaking as they’re addressing the ball.”Tiger Woods was among the many famous golfers whose names Mr. Robson announced. “Thank you Ivor for making each one of my Open starts so memorable,” Woods wrote on social media.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesHis final British Open, in 2015 at St. Andrews, was also the final one for Tom Watson, who had won the tournament five times. “He gave me an 18th-green flag, which had a message on it,” Mr. Robson told Today’s Golfer magazine in 2022. “‘We have traveled this long road together. All the best in your retirement. Tom Watson.’”After Mr. Robson’s death, Tiger Woods wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “Thank you Ivor making each one of my Open starts so memorable.” Woods won three British Open titles.Mr. Robson’s survivors include his wife, Lesley; his daughter, Julia; and his son, Philip.When the R&A chose Mr. Robson’s replacement, they picked two men: David Lancaster, to do most of the work, and a backup, Matt Corker, to fill in when Mr. Lancaster takes a break or two.“I believe the vocal cords need to be soothed by drinking water at some point,” Mr. Lancaster told The New York Times in 2016. “Fortunately, the R&A understood.” More

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      Why Hasn’t The British Open Ever Been Played in Wales?

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      The Open is being played for the 151st time, this time at Royal Liverpool in England. It has never once been to Wales.The rain rat-a-tatted atop the umbrellas around Royal Liverpool Golf Club’s 17th green one afternoon this past week, the air so chilled that it did not feel like even an English summer. A veil of mist clouded the landscape. Still near enough to peek through, though, was the Welsh coast, a handful of long tee shots across the estuary.The British Open, scheduled to conclude on Sunday, may never come closer to Wales.First played when Queen Victoria was on the throne, the Open is a national rite that has encompassed only so much of the nation: Unlike England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Wales has not hosted it. With sites through 2026 already selected and Wales still left out, the drought will last at least as long as the first 154 Opens. By then, Northern Ireland, which did not welcome a modern Open until 2019, will have had another.The R&A, the Open’s organizer, has explained Wales’s exclusion as rote matters of infrastructure and capability — no small subjects since the tournament requires temporarily raising a hugely guarded, hospitality-filled and championship-caliber coastal enclave for tens of thousands of people a day. The R&A’s stance, though, has invited years of questions about whether one of the country’s signature sporting events reflects Britain quite as much as it should.“Not all parts of the U.K. are being touched by the Open, and leaving an entire nation out of it doesn’t ring true to that mantra of golf being open to all,” said Ken Skates, a member of the Welsh Parliament who, when he was economy minister, lobbied the R&A to bring the Open to Wales.“It’s a little frustrating,” he politely allowed as he stood behind Royal Liverpool’s first green on Friday.Royal Liverpool Golf Club is hosting the British Open this year. But Wales, seen in the distance, never has.Jon Super/Associated PressJockeying for hosting rights is hardly new to sports, and men’s golf is an especially valuable target for the smattering of places with courses challenging enough to test the world’s best. Of the four major tournaments, three are played at different venues each year. (The exception, the Masters Tournament, is always held at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.)The R&A’s roster of Open-eligible courses effectively numbers just nine these days, from a clutch of Scottish properties along the North Sea to Royal St. George’s in southeast England. After this weekend’s event at Royal Liverpool, in England’s northwest, the tournament is scheduled to return next year to Royal Troon in Scotland, followed by Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland and then England’s Royal Birkdale.By just about all accounts, the R&A routinely faces a predicament over where the Open can be put on to its customary standard. A handful of past venues are no longer in the mix, including Prestwick, the original Open course that was ultimately judged too small for teeming crowds. More recently, former President Donald J. Trump’s ties to Turnberry have kept the R&A away.Wales, though, has never had a turn at all. Indeed, one of the biggest problems for Wales is that the R&A has stopped staging Opens at more courses than the country has contenders to host one. Only Royal Porthcawl is considered a possibility, and even its cheerleaders acknowledge its shortcomings.The exclusion nevertheless stings.“We have an inferiority complex,” John Hopkins, a golf writer who has been a Royal Porthcawl member since the late 1990s, said of the Welsh people, smilingly adding that they were principally renowned “for our ability to play rugby and our ability to sing.”But hosting a British Open, he said, “would show that we punched our weight in golf.”Some believe forces beyond tournament logistics are at work to keep the Open elsewhere, perhaps historical inertia or an innate tendency for the St. Andrews-based R&A to favor England and Scotland. In 2019, The Telegraph urged the R&A to “cut out the politics” and “ignore the concerns about ‘infrastructure’ and the strength of the links because they are mere smoke screens.”There is little doubt that the R&A has been warming to Royal Porthcawl for other important events, an approach some have regarded as a consolation prize. Next weekend, the Senior Open will be decided there, and the Women’s Open is scheduled to make its Royal Porthcawl debut in 2025. Although there are concerns about whether Royal Porthcawl is long enough for the powerful men’s players of today, the course itself is seen as largely suitable for an Open, in part because it is especially vulnerable to the wild weather that can define the tournament, as Bernhard Langer saw during the two Senior Opens he won there.Bernhard Langer at Royal Porthcawl at the Senior Open Championship in 2017.Phil Inglis/Getty Images“One was bone-dry: The ball was running 100 yards on the fairway,” Langer, who also won two Masters Tournaments, said in an interview. “And one was wet and windy and just as miserable as can be, and that’s links golf.”Martin Slumbers, the R&A’s chief executive, said on Wednesday that the course was “absolutely world class.”“But we need a lot of land,” he added quickly. “We need a lot of infrastructure. We need a lot of facilities for a championship of this size. At present, that is just not possible in that part of the country.”Founded in 1891, Royal Porthcawl has a hemmed-in footprint, with relatively little space to erect gates, grandstands, premium seating, scoring tents and all of the other temporary facilities required for a major. This year’s Open was expected to attract 260,000 spectators, a showing second only to the 290,000 fans who filled the Old Course at St. Andrews last year. The last time the British Open reported attendance below 150,000 was a decade ago, at Muirfield.When Langer last played a Senior Open at Royal Porthcawl, in 2017, the tournament drew about 32,000, though poor weather stalked the event.Although the course is a drive of roughly 45 minutes from Cardiff, the Welsh capital, the area around the club has few of the restaurants, hotels and transit links that make the Open among the smoothest events in international sports. During this tournament at Royal Liverpool, many restaurants and rental homes in Hoylake have hosted legions of visitors. Still more have made the short journey to and from Liverpool, a city of about a half-million people, often using a train service running every 10 minutes.Langer, who had no doubts that Royal Porthcawl could prove an adequate Open host from a golf perspective, appeared far more reluctant to say that it could manage the other challenges of a tournament he played 31 times.“It’s hard,” he said, “to build new roads and highways and 100 hotels and create the room for a tented village and 50,000 spectators.”“It’s hard to build new roads and highways and 100 hotels and create the room for a tented village and 50,000 spectators,” Langer said about staging the British Open at Royal Porthcawl. Cameron Smith/R&A, via Getty ImagesWelsh leaders have signaled a willingness to pursue public investments in exchange for the Open going to Royal Porthcawl, and some Royal Porthcawl members have tried to buy nearby farmland that, if vacated, could make an Open far more feasible. But their yearslong efforts have not yet yielded the kind of breakthrough that could overcome the R&A’s misgivings.The ascendance of Northern Ireland’s Royal Portrush, though, has given Welsh officials something of a strategy, or at least a dose of confidence, ultimately misplaced or not.Skates predicted the R&A could bend within a decade.Then he wandered off to find his brother, Wales rising in the distance. More

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      British Open Won’t Rule Out Saudi Deal

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      The Open is not looking for a title sponsor for one of the world’s most celebrated tournaments, but other options could be on the table.The leader of the R&A, who only a year ago was among the fiercest critics of LIV Golf, did not rule out the possibility on Wednesday that the group, the British Open’s organizer, could someday accept money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.“The world of sport has changed dramatically in the last 12 months, and it is not feasible for the R&A or golf to just ignore what is a societal change on a global basis,” Martin Slumbers, the R&A chief executive, said at Royal Liverpool, where the Open will begin on Thursday. “We will be considering within all the parameters that we look at all the options that we have.”The wealth fund has lately surged to become one of the most prominent benefactors in sports, cumulatively spreading billions of dollars through golf and soccer and stirring speculation about where it might put its money next. Britain has been central to the wealth fund’s ambitions: In 2021, it purchased the Premier League soccer team Newcastle United.The fund and its allies have insisted that the investments are intended to broaden the Saudi economy, but they have faced skepticism and fears that Saudi leaders are partly looking to use sports to rehabilitate their kingdom’s reputation for human rights violations.Although Slumbers said last year that he was “very comfortable in golf globally growing,” he complained then that LIV’s Saudi-bankrolled model was “not in the best long-term interests of the sport” and “entirely driven by money.” Human rights abuses, he declared then, were “abhorrent and unacceptable.”He appeared far less fearsome on Wednesday, even as he placed a limit on a potential arrangement with the wealth fund, or anyone else, and insisted that he was uninterested in a so-called presenting sponsor for the Open, which will be played in the coming days for the 151st time. (Rolex is the principal sponsor for next week’s Senior Open at Royal Porthcawl in Wales. Next month, the AIG Women’s Open will be contested at Walton Heath, near London.)But asked directly during a news conference about the possibility of the wealth fund becoming “a partner,” Slumbers replied, “If I’m very open, we are and do and continue to do, talk to various potential sponsors.”Slumbers’s receptiveness reflects the swelling fears among golf executives about the financial sustainability of the sport, whose prize funds have recently soared. The purse for this year’s Open is $16.5 million, more than double that of a decade ago. On Wednesday, Slumbers said prize money was increasing far faster than he and other executives had expected.Some of the pressure swamping men’s golf could ease if the PGA Tour and LIV end what has amounted to an arms race for the world’s top players. The tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour took a step toward that last month, when they announced a plan to bring their golf business ventures into a new, for-profit company. The agreement, which the R&A is not a part of, may not close for months.Slumbers said that the R&A, which, along with the U.S. Golf Association, writes the sport’s rule book, would “absolutely welcome an end to the disruption in the men’s professional game.”He was much less eager for a partnership with former President Donald J. Trump, who has been one of LIV’s biggest boosters and has repeatedly asserted that the R&A is looking to return the Open to Turnberry, one of Scotland’s most spectacular courses. Trump purchased the property in 2014, five years after its most recent Open.“We will not return until we are convinced that the focus will be on the championship, the players and the course itself, and we do not believe that is achievable in the current circumstances,” Slumbers said in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.Trump has nevertheless claimed since then that the R&A is looking to host another Open at Turnberry. Instead of acquiescing on Wednesday, Slumbers instead came close to repeating his 2021 statement.“We’ve been very clear,” he said. More

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      For the British Open, You Just Can’t Forget the Weather

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      The R&A has learned from past mistakes. This year, it’s planning to allow the wind to dictate how the course at Royal Liverpool is set up.Royal Liverpool is hosting the British Open, which starts on Thursday, for the third time in 20 years. And the biggest deciding factor in how the course plays and who wins could be the one thing that the R&A, golf’s governing body in Britain, has no control over: the weather.When Tiger Woods won here in 2006, the course was firm and baked out, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees. Woods kept his booming driver in the bag on almost every tee box, choosing to hit irons on most holes to control the flight of his ball and to play the roll on the hard fairways.Eight years later, Rory McIlroy played the same course, which dates from 1869, in vastly different conditions. It was wet and lush. The temperatures were in the 70s, and a severe rainstorm blew through after the third round.While both players had low scores — 18 under for Woods and 17 under for McIlroy — and beat their nearest competitor by two shots, that variability is how the R&A likes it these days.“It wasn’t easy,” McIlroy said in a post-round interview at the time. “There were a few guys who were making a run at me, so I had to stay focused and get the job done.”Going into this week, the R&A said it had a series of plans that would match the weather forecast to test the golfers. Where the tees and pins will be placed will be determined less by the length of a hole on the scorecard or slope of the green and more by conditions the governing body can’t plan for in advance: the wind, the rain, the heat and the cold.Tiger Woods with his caddie Steve Williams at the 2006 British Open at Royal Liverpool. The course was firm and baked out, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees that year.Warren Little/Getty Images“It’s fair to say we’re very much in the hands of the weather,” said Grant Moir, the R&A’s executive director of governance, who leads on-course setup at the Open. “A couple of months ago, there was a drought, and the course was very dry and burned out. We thought we were headed for a hard and fast Open, which was terrific.“But in the past couple of weeks we’ve had a significant amount of rainfall, and the course has greened up. So, our fairways and greens are softer and certainly softer than at St. Andrews last year,” he said about the 2022 Open. “We just accept that. We’ll adapt the way we set up the course to the conditions we have and the weather we have.”This is what an Open has come to mean, where whatever preparation players have done could be for nothing given the chance that the conditions change.Padraig Harrington of Ireland, a two-time Open champion, said he had been preparing for hard, firm conditions, but knows that could change by the time of the first round.“It’s not a course where it nearly matters as much what you do getting to know the course ahead of time,” he said. “I’ll only play two nines in practice. You know what you’re doing. At Royal Liverpool, you can be aggressive, but it’s your decision-making in the wind that matters.”The setup of the Open is regularly compared to the United States Open. This year’s contest at Los Angeles Country Club had lower scores than the United States Golf Association, the governing body in the United States, usually allows with its setup. On the first day, two players broke the championship record, with Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele shooting 62.Critics said it was too easy, with a winning score of 10-under par. But Harrington came to the course’s defense. It wasn’t the wide fairways that made scoring conditions favorable. It was the greens.“We’ve never putted on greens that good in the U.S. Open,” he said. “They never got crispy. Usually the greens on a Sunday in that major, the ball won’t stop. I didn’t three-putt all week.”At the 2014 British Open, won by Rory McIlroy, Royal Liverpool was wet and lush. The temperatures were in the 70s, and a severe rainstorm blew through after the third round.David Davies/PA Images, via Getty ImagesStewart Hagestad, a member of Los Angeles Country Club and a two-time United States Mid-Amateur Champion who has qualified for the U.S. Open in the past, said before the tournament that the conditions in Los Angeles were almost too good for a major. “What makes major championship is weather,” he said.This week at Royal Liverpool, the weather forecast is mixed, but Moir said that was fine. “We’re looking to provide an appropriate challenge,” he said. “We have to recognize the forecast and adapt from there and go with the best information we have.”It wasn’t always so. One of the turning points for the R&A was the 1999 Open at Carnoustie in Scotland, which earned the nickname Car-nasty, for how tough the course played. That week was memorably brutal.Jean Van de Velde of France was in the lead after 71 holes. With one hole to go, the championship appeared to be his. He had a three-stroke lead over two players when he hit an errant drive on the final hole.It only got worse, in a nightmare finish that was more akin to how an amateur would play than an elite player. His ball found the rough, the water, a bunker, even a grandstand. When it was over, he carded a triple bogey, which dropped him into a tie for the championship and put him into a three-man playoff.In the four-hole match, Van de Velde lost to Paul Lawrie of Scotland. The winning score was 6-over par.Yet the criticism went deeper than just Van de Velde’s performance. The rough was so high and the fairways so firm that play was brutally challenging and incredibly slow.Harrington, who shot 15-over par that year to finish in 29th place, said the Open course setups since then had not been as fixated on what the winning score would be.“In 1999, the R&A brutalized the players and did everything they could to make it tough,” he said. “After that, the R&A said we’ve got great golf courses. We’re going to let the weather determine if it’s tough or easy. They’re not going to get in the way.”Moir did not disagree with that assessment. “There were a lot of learnings from Carnoustie in 1999,” he said. “The biggest change was the R&A took greater control over the setup. We’re talking 24 years ago — the attention wasn’t as great in those days. It was a different time.”The biggest change to Royal Liverpool since its last Open has been the creation of a new par-3 and slotting it in as the 17th hole. It had been the 15th hole and used to play downhill to the water; now the shot has been reversed, so players will have to hit a short shot up a hill to a tabletop green that is fully exposed to the elements.“If we have any sort of wind at all, it’s going to impact on that hole,” Moir said. “It’s an exposed green on top of the dune, and the backdrop is the beach. Any wind will be at its peak up there.”It’s also an example of how the prevailing wind direction on any given day will determine where the pin is. The R&A has plans for all four days to pick a spot where players will have to navigate the breeze, not just ride the direction it’s blowing, to get a shot in there close.“The two modern Opens here are great examples of the impact that weather can have,” Moir said. “But what this course will do is it will provide chances to score. There’s an opportunity to make bigger numbers out there, too.” More

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      U.S.G.A. Steadfast in Plan to Curb Pro Golfers’ Driving Distances

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      Players are objecting to a proposed change from golf’s rulemakers to use new balls, but the U.S. Golf Association said Wednesday it would not abandon the plan.The United States Golf Association acknowledged Wednesday that it had heard ferocious opposition to its proposal for professional players to use balls that travel shorter distances — but it also signaled no interest in abandoning its ambitions to rein in equipment in the next several years.The association and the R&A, a governing body based in Britain, had in March proposed a rule that they estimated could trim top golfers’ tee shots by an average of about 15 yards. Framed as an effort to preserve the sport and the relevance of many of its finest courses, the proposal provoked a backlash among hard-driving professionals, who are routinely hitting tee shots at distances that were all but unimaginable only a few decades ago, and equipment manufacturers, who relish selling weekend duffers the same balls the stars strike at events like this week’s U.S. Open.“Our intent is pure; it’s not malicious,” Fred Perpall, the U.S.G.A.’s president, said at a news conference at the Los Angeles Country Club, where the Open will begin on Thursday. “We’re not trying to do something to damage anyone. We’re thinking about all the good that this good game has given us, and we’re thinking about what is our responsibility to make sure that this game is still strong and healthy 50 years from now for our children’s children.”The debate about distance in golf has played out for years, with executives increasingly irritated with stopgap fixes, like redesigning holes to accommodate the game’s most potent hitters. Some of the sport’s retired greats, including Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, have pressed golf’s rule book writers to take blunt and urgent action.“Not everybody’s got the ability to go buy the golf course next door, like you do at Augusta,” Nicklaus said in an interview with The New York Times at the Masters Tournament in April. “You can’t just keep buying land and adding. We used to have in this country probably a couple of thousand golf courses that could be tournament golf courses. Today, we maybe have 100.”In the 2003 season, PGA Tour players recorded an average driving distance of about 286 yards, with nine golfers, including Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh and John Daly, typically hitting at least 300 yards off the tee. So far this season, the tour’s average driving distance stands at nearly 298 yards. Some 91 players — up nearly 10 percent since the U.S.G.A. and the R&A released their proposal — exceed 300 yards on average.Under the plan, balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour would generally be banned.The U.S.G.A. and the R&A are gathering feedback about their proposal, which would not take effect until at least 2026 and would be classified as a model local rule, empowering individual tours and events to adopt it. The U.S.G.A. and the R&A would almost certainly impose the rule at the events they control, including the U.S. Open and the British Open, two of the four men’s major championships.But other golf power brokers, including the PGA Tour, have not embraced the plan, and many of the game’s biggest stars have openly resisted the thought of deliberately curbing distance.Even those who have been receptive to the prospect of making balls seem a little less like long-distance missiles have urged golf’s leaders to have a consistent standard throughout the game, without differences for top-tier professionals.Under the plan, balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour would generally be banned.Desiree Rios/The New York Times“I just don’t think you should have a ball for the pros that might be used some tournaments, might not be used some tournaments, then amateurs can buy different golf balls,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, who won last year’s U.S. Open. “I don’t think that would work.”Tour players recently met privately in Ohio with U.S.G.A. officials and manufacturers to discuss the proposal, and Patrick Cantlay, who is No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking, said this week that “tensions were high” in those sessions.“Seems like golf is in a good spot, and doing anything that could potentially harm that would be foolish,” Cantlay said.Mike Whan, the U.S.G.A.’s chief executive, said Wednesday that he was sensitive to the concerns bubbling up from players and suggested that the governing bodies could tweak their proposals in the months ahead. But he emphasized that the U.S.G.A. is also concerned about the millions of golfers who are not professionals and neither he nor Perpall indicated plans for a wholesale surrender.“If you’re going to take on significant governance decisions that you think are going to help the game be stronger in 20 and 40 years, you can’t expect everybody to like those decisions, and that’s part of governance,” Whan said. “You have to decide whether or not you can stand up for what you think is the game long-term, knowing that maybe 20 percent or 30 percent or 50 percent like it and the others don’t. But I think the feedback process is important and it makes us better. Even when we don’t like the feedback we get, it makes us better.”Whan and Perpall’s impassioned defense unfolded as one of golf’s most influential figures, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, was absent from the U.S. Open course. The tour disclosed late Tuesday that he was “recuperating from a medical situation” and that two other executives, Ron Price and Tyler Dennis, had indefinitely assumed day-to-day oversight of the circuit’s operations.The announcement that Monahan had stepped back followed seven days of turmoil in professional golf. Last Tuesday, the tour announced that it planned to partner with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the force behind the LIV Golf league that upended the sport, after months of depicting Saudi money as tainted. Monahan, who helped to negotiate the deal, was criticized as a cash-hungry hypocrite, but he has retained at least some crucial allies inside the tour.“Jay is a human being,” Webb Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open winner and a member of the tour’s board, said in an interview on Wednesday. “Golf is a game, and oftentimes, we make golf into something so much bigger than it is and we dehumanize people.” Perhaps, he said, Tuesday’s announcement would give “people a little perspective.”But Simpson said he knew nothing about Monahan’s status beyond the tour’s initial statement. The tour has declined to elaborate on it or to give a projected timeline for Monahan’s return.Price and Dennis said in a statement that their priority was “to support our players and continue the work underway to further lead the PGA Tour and golf’s future.”In its own statement on Wednesday, the wealth fund “committed to working closely with the PGA leadership and board to advance our previously announced transaction to invest significantly in the growth of golf for the benefit of players, fans and the expansion of the game around the world.” More

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      2023 Masters: Golf Balls and Groupings

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      The talk at the Masters Tournament is about possible changes to the ball, the week’s stormy forecast and the par-3 course’s face-lift.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Even at this year’s Masters Tournament, there are debates beyond LIV Golf, and there may not be one more inflamed than the conflagration over the future of the golf ball.Last month, worn down by gaudy statistics, the R&A and the U.S. Golf Association made a proposal: Within a few years, elite players should use a ball that does not fly quite so far.It did not sit well.“Let us be athletic,” Bubba Watson, a two-time Masters winner, said in an interview on the day of the announcement. “Let us try to come up with new ways to hit the ball better, straighter, farther.”Justin Thomas, the winner of two P.G.A. Championships, was even more pointed about the idea, which supporters estimated would cut the tee shots of top golfers by about 15 yards.“They’re basing it off the top 0.1 percent of all golfers. You know what I mean?” he said. “I don’t know how many of y’all consistently play golf in here, but I promise none of you have come in from the golf course and said, you know, I’m hitting it so far and straight today that golf’s just not even fun anymore.”But it was not until Tuesday that the world heard from Tiger Woods, one of Thomas’s closest friends in golf.“The guys are going to become more athletic,” Woods said. “Everyone is going to get bigger, stronger, faster as the generations go on.”A change “should have happened a long time ago,” Woods said. A few moments later, he added: “The amateurs should be able to have fun and still hit the golf ball far, but we can be regulated about how far we hit it.”Part of Woods’s concern traces to the limits of courses. Augusta National Golf Club had the resources and enough space to add 35 yards to the 13th hole. Not every course — not even every great course — does. Besides, Woods suggested, an altered ball might make for a better, more sophisticated sport.This year’s 13th hole was lengthened by 35 yards.Doug Mills/The New York Times“On tour, it’s exciting to see Rory McIlroy hit it 340 yards on every hole,” Woods said. “But does it challenge us and separate the guys who can really hit the ball in the middle of the face and control their shots? I think if you roll the ball back a little bit, you’ll see that the better ball-strikers will have more of an advantage over the guys who miss it a little bit.”If the governing bodies proceed with the change — a decision is still many months away — the burden will shift to golf ball manufacturers to come up with products for professionals that comply with the rule, which would generally ban balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour.The companies are already registering worries but thinking through how they will react.“We’re going to be looking at it and researching it and understanding what we would do and how we would respond to it,” Dan Murphy, the president and chief executive of Bridgestone Golf, said in an interview by the Augusta National clubhouse Tuesday afternoon. “I don’t think we have a choice.”Like many other manufacturers, Murphy worries about the risk of confusing consumers with a new variety of equipment options. But Bridgestone expects that Woods, who uses its products, will play a role in designing any new equipment, helping the company to refine aerodynamics, trajectory, feel and spin.“He has a longstanding catalog of the golf ball: He’s seen it change from balata to the solid-core technology in the early 2000s that he played so well with, so from that standpoint, we would definitely rely on him to give us feedback,” said Adam Rehberg, a Bridgestone official who works on research and design. “We still have to make sure the ball can do everything they need.”If, of course, they ultimately need it.The groupings are out. Plan accordingly.The LIV players Phil Mickelson, left, Harold Varner III, middle, and Talor Gooch, will be in separate groups at the Masters.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTournament play will begin on Thursday at 8 a.m. Eastern time, when Mike Weir, the 2003 Masters champion, and Kevin Na, a LIV Golf team captain, will tee off at No. 1. But most of the other players Thursday and Friday will be in groups of three. Here are the most eye-catching groups (All times Eastern):9:36 a.m.: Mackenzie Hughes, Shane Lowry and Thomas Pieters (12:48 p.m. Friday)10:18 a.m.: Viktor Hovland, Xander Schauffele and Tiger Woods (1:24 p.m. Friday)10:42 a.m.: Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas and Cameron Young (1:48 p.m. Friday)10:54 a.m.: Sungjae Im, Hideki Matsuyama and Cameron Smith (2 p.m. Friday)11:54 a.m.: Brooks Koepka, Danny Willett and Gary Woodland (8:48 a.m. Friday)12:24 p.m.: Tom Hoge, Si Woo Kim and Phil Mickelson (9:12 a.m. Friday)1:12 p.m.: Corey Conners, Dustin Johnson and Justin Rose (10:06 a.m. Friday)1:24 p.m.: Matt Fitzpatrick, Collin Morikawa and Will Zalatoris (10:18 a.m. Friday)1:36 p.m.: Sam Bennett, Max Homa and Scottie Scheffler (10:30 a.m. Friday)1:48 p.m.: Sam Burns, Tom Kim and Rory McIlroy (10:42 a.m. Friday)2 p.m.: Tony Finau, Tommy Fleetwood and Jordan Spieth (10:54 a.m. Friday).ESPN will broadcast the Thursday and Friday rounds beginning at 3 p.m. The Masters Tournament’s website will also stream coverage from Augusta National.The weather is looking like a big problem.The weather forecast for the tournament, especially Saturday, was not promising.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIf you are planning to watch the tournament all day Saturday, it might be time to consider a backup plan now that the forecast has gone from bad to worse.Thursday, Augusta National’s official forecast says, has a 40 percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Friday will bring a 70 percent chance of precipitation, including isolated thunderstorms.Then there is Saturday: “Cloudy, colder and breezy with a 90 percent chance of rain. Rain could be heavy at times.” And winds could gust up to 25 miles per hour.Also, the predicted high is 52 degrees.Spring!The par-3 course got a face-lift.Jon Rahm during the par-3 event last year. No player has won the par-3 contest and a green jacket in the same year.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNo. 13 on Augusta National’s primary course has gotten most of the attention this week as players have sized up a hole that is 35 yards longer this year. (Asked on Monday what he made of the hole, Fred Couples replied: “Well, if I were 30, I’d probably be excited about it. At 63, I think it’s an incredible hole. I won’t go for it.”)But on Wednesday afternoon, the nine-hole, par-3 course, tucked away in a corner of Augusta National, will take center stage. The course’s informal Wednesday contest, first held in 1960, is a Masters ritual and popular with players and fans alike. The course is playing differently this year, though, after some off-season changes, including a rerouting of the first five holes and new putting surfaces. Augusta National said the refurbished greens, which now have a different kind of bentgrass, will be a “testing ground,” perhaps foreshadowing changes to the primary course.Augusta National also said it had installed a new irrigation system and expanded the complex for restrooms and sales of concessions and merchandise.“It was unbelievable,” Watson said in an interview last month after he saw the redesigned area.“How did they do it in 150 days?” Watson, who now plays on the LIV Golf circuit, asked later. “I don’t know. It’s money and manpower, that’s how they do it.”On that much, LIV and PGA Tour players might agree.They might also agree that anyone who wants to win the 2023 Masters should perhaps try to finish second on Wednesday: No par-3 contest victor has gone on to win the green jacket in the same year. More

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

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

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      Could a Scot Please Win the British Open One Day? Is That Too Much to Ask?

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      The last golfer from Scotland to win the British Open was Paul Lawrie in 1999 at Carnoustie, and his victory was somewhat of a fluke.ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — They were having fun, perhaps too much fun, on the Old Course on Saturday at the British Open.With the wind and weather mild and Rory McIlroy and many more of the world’s best golfers in town, under par felt more like par during this rollicking third round brimming with birdies, clenched fists and big grins in the direction of the grandstands and fans packed behind the ropes.But local knowledge, as usual, seemed to count for little at the only men’s golf major played on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.St. Andrews, full of old stones and bones, has staged more Open Championships than any other course, but a Scottish golfer will once again not be winning it.Only three Scots were in the 156-player field, which was actually a threefold improvement over last year’s British Open at Royal St. George’s, when only one Scotsman, Robert MacIntyre, took part.That was a historic low in an event with a surplus of history. This is the 150th edition of a tournament that was first played in 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club on Scotland’s west coast. All 13 competitors were Scots that year, and until the early 20th century a majority of the participants in the Open continued to be Scots, along with quite a few naturalized Americans from Scotland.But no Scot, exported or domestic, has won the Open or any major men’s tournament since Paul Lawrie in 1999 at Carnoustie, and Lawrie’s victory, with all due respect to a fine player, was a minor miracle.Then ranked 241st in the world, Lawrie trailed by 10 shots heading into the final round and only made it into the decisive playoff because of one of the sport’s most excruciating (and memorable) meltdowns as the French golfer Jean Van de Velde blew a three-stroke lead on what really should have been the final hole.Scotland continues to wait in vain for a second lightning strike at the Open, and the two Scots who did make the cut at St. Andrews this year — MacIntyre and David Law — will not be the ones to provide it.Both are more than 12 shots off the torrid pace set by McIlroy and Viktor Hovland, who shared the lead at 16 under par heading into Sunday’s final round and who dueled from start to finish on Saturday. Both shot 66, although McIlroy had the shot of the day, holing from a bunker for eagle on the 10th hole.Robert MacIntyre of Scotland called the atmosphere at the Old Course “absolutely brilliant.”Phil Noble/ReutersMacIntyre, a promising 25-year-old from Oban who shot a 69 on Friday, found himself having to turn away from the 16th fairway at one stage during his round because there was so much commotion and emotion.“The fan support is absolutely brilliant, but I was feeling it,” he said. “There’s so many people supporting me, and it means so much to me.”“I wasn’t going to let them down,” he continued. “But I was trying almost too hard.”That has certainly been an obstacle for the Scots at home through the years. But in truth, the Scottish drought has gone on for too long to be considered a drought. Of the 33 Scottish men to win a major, only two have done so since World War II: Lawrie and Sandy Lyle, who won the 1985 British Open and the 1988 Masters.Demographics are an obstacle. Scotland, with 5.5 million people, has a much smaller talent pool than England, with its 56 million people, including Nick Faldo, who won six majors in the 1980s and 1990s, and Matt Fitzpatrick, who won this year’s U.S. Open. But Scotland has about three times as many inhabitants as Northern Ireland, which has produced three major champions in the past 12 years: Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke and McIlroy.Bernard Gallacher, 73, a longtime European Ryder Cup player and a captain from Scotland, makes the good point that Scotland’s many great links courses are not the ideal places to grow champions.“It’s not a great training ground for great golfers to play on a seaside course every day,” Gallacher said on Saturday. “I know the wind is benign this week, but normally there’s a strong wind blowing and it’s not great developmentally to be playing your golf in strong winds all the time. So that’s why the really top golfers usually come from courses where they can develop their swings, like parkland golf courses in the U.K. Even Rory, who comes from Northern Ireland, was not brought up on a seaside course. His golf course, Holywood, is inland.”And though McIlroy did not do this, Gallacher believes Scottish golfers need to follow the prevailing winds by playing collegiate golf in the United States. “We just don’t have that system over here,” he said. “In my view, Scottish golfers stay at home too much. We have to break our way of thinking a bit.”David Law of Scotland teeing off on the fourth hole during the third round on Saturday.Warren Little/Getty ImagesLaw, a 31-year-old father of two from up the coast in Aberdeen, is making his first major championship appearance.“I’ve probably played the Old Course eight to 10 times, and first played it when I was 18,” he said. “But even if I played it 100 times, I’m sure I’d still get goose bumps.”Ranked 351st, Law has long been mentored by Lawrie, who is deeply involved in developing young Scottish talents and who hit the first tee shot here in recognition of past glories but never came close to making the cut at age 53.Lawrie is not the greatest Scottish player of the modern era. There is Lyle, as well as Colin Montgomerie, who could never quite win a major but was the longtime leader for the European Tour and European Ryder Cup team.But Lawrie is the only still-active Scottish major champion, and he may not play the Open again.“I will wait and see how I feel next year, but right now, it’s no,” Lawrie said. “I always said I wouldn’t ever take a spot if I didn’t feel as though I could certainly play OK and play four rounds.”Law struggled plenty himself in his third round on Saturday, shooting a 5-over-par 77 to drop to two over par for the tournament.“It’s not a regular tournament, but we’ve tried to make it as normal as we can,” he said earlier in the week. “I’m not just here to soak it all in.”There is, of course, plenty to absorb. St. Andrews not only has the R&A World Golf Museum, which sits just across the street from the Old Course. It is an open-air golf museum, as well, one where the American accents often outnumber the Scottish ones in the stores, pro shops and cobbled alleyways.Business and real estate are booming again after the pandemic lockdowns, and The Times of London reported this week that properties near the Old Course’s iconic 18th green are selling for up to 2,500 pounds (about $3,000) a square foot, that housing prices in St. Andrews are up 23 percent in the past year and that about 50 percent of the buyers in central St. Andrews are from abroad.It is not just the golf: St. Andrews University remains one of the most prestigious in Britain, with alumni that include John Knox, Thomas Bruce and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (better known as William and Kate). But golf certainly is at the core of the enduring attraction, and the shops on Golf Place, a road that borders the Old Course, are filled with golf trinkets and memorabilia, much of which feature Scottish golfers like James Braid, who won the Open five times in the early 1900s.Would a present-day Scottish champion really provide much of a boost in the marketing or the bottom line?“It might make a bit of difference, but being in St. Andrews, I’m not sure it would make a huge difference,” said Hamish Steedman, chairman of the St. Andrews Golf Co., which continues to manufacture traditional hickory clubs as well as the modern, metal versions. “Our visitors and customers come from all over.”They are back en masse now that travel restrictions have been lifted, and after the 2020 Open Championship was canceled, the international golfers are back in force, as well. The leaderboard on Saturday night was a mix of Europeans, Americans, Asians and Australians.What was missing were the locals. 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      Who Engraves the British Open’s Claret Jug on Sunday?

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      ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The good news for Garry Harvey is that almost no one in this year’s British Open field has a name quite as long as Severiano Ballesteros — Spanish master of the short game, three-time Open champion and unwitting menace to a man with minutes to engrave one of golf’s most sacred trophies.Harvey will face a foreboding stretch on Sunday anyway. Like his father, Alex, who was tasked with etching Ballesteros into history on deadline, he will have perhaps 10 minutes to add Rory McIlroy (11 letters) or Scottie Scheffler (16 letters) or someone else entirely to the claret jug.He will fret over spelling. He will fuss over spacing. For engraving efficiency as much as national pride, he would not have minded if the Scot Paul Lawrie had won again. But he began engraving when he was 14, has handled claret jug duties since Tony Blair was prime minister and has a large enough reservoir of on-demand tranquility that he played in the 1979 Open, one of three that Ballesteros won, forcing Alex Harvey to add the Spaniard’s name to the jug instead of his son’s.“When I get nervous, I remember what my father looked like and taught me,” Garry Harvey, 67 and soft-spoken, said along the Old Course at St. Andrews, the site of the 150th Open. “When I’m under pressure, I think about the old man, and then I just do it.”Harvey works with a tool he believes is at least a century old.Alastair Grant/Associated PressAnd so a letter, Harvey said, might take him eight seconds to add to a band on the jug’s base.Generations of Open winners handled the engraving of the jug, which is formally known as the Golf Champion Trophy. But after Roberto De Vicenzo, the 1967 victor at Royal Liverpool, failed to do so, the R&A, the Open’s organizer, took control and turned to Alex Harvey. Garry Harvey, born months after Peter Thomson won the first of his five Opens, began his engraving education around then.At the same time, he was emerging as one of Britain’s best young golfers, finishing as the runner-up at the boys’ amateur championship in 1971 and winning the following year. He put his own name on the trophy in the most literal sense, too.Other golf achievements followed, including a victory at the 1985 Kenya Open and a berth in an Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes, where he finished in a tie for 139th. All the while, Alex Harvey’s hands were evolving into a fixture of television coverage of the Open.Garry Harvey would often accompany his father, scrutinizing his patience and practices. Alex Harvey did not, for example, start adding Jean van de Velde’s name when he arrived at No. 18 at Carnoustie in 1999 with the three-shot lead that he soon squandered. He always waited for word from the leader of the R&A that the score was final.Now Garry Harvey, whose father died in 2008, a few years after retiring, has been around the Open so long that he cannot remember exactly whose name he was first charged with engraving.Alex Harvey, Garry’s father, engraving the jug in 1993.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto via Getty ImagesEven if the current craftsman typically prefers to work in the background, the ritual is seen as an element of the Open’s charm. Tom Watson, whose eight major victories include five British Open wins, said that rapid engraving had grown to become “part of the whole fabric of the Open Championship.”“It really doesn’t matter whether your name is on the trophy or not, honestly — you have the trophy in hand and you get to see that beautiful claret jug — but it’s a perk,” Watson, one of the first winners to raise a freshly updated trophy, said on Friday. “It’s a great perk.”In turn, Harvey has a well-settled practice for the final round, preparing certain parts of the engraving, like the tournament’s site and year, in advance. But he also avoids venturing onto the course on Sunday, rife with hazards — crowds, nerves, fall risks — that could conspire to keep him from being at his position when the minute comes. He mutes the television, uninterested in the commentary about his hands, and does not care for the clicks of a still camera’s shutter. He hopes a floorboard does not shake and interrupt his rhythm and concentration as he works with a tool he believes is at least a century old.“There are all types of things that can go wrong, but the spelling’s important,” he said. “You don’t want to slip, and that can’t happen.” (“The spelling of Padraig, you’ve got to be very careful with that one,” he said, referring to Padraig Harrington, the Irish golfer whose name he has twice added to the jug.)“It really doesn’t matter whether your name is on the trophy or not, honestly — you have the trophy in hand and you get to see that beautiful claret jug — but it’s a perk,” Tom Watson said.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersThe Open gig, of course, is a fraction of his work, which often brings other sports trophies and medals to his work area, whether it is at St. Andrews or closer to his home in Crook of Devon, a village about an hour’s drive from the Old Course. Along with his wife, Jeanette, he runs a jewelry shop in nearby Dunfermline, where it seems only a few customers know that he works on the jug.He expects to work with the R&A for as long as he can, and there is no prospect, he said, of another family member assuming the role.He will, eventually, get around to watching a replay of Sunday’s round. He has plans for Monday, though: a Senior Open qualifier. But before then, until the etching is done, he will wait and wonder what, exactly, he will need to do almost as soon as the last putt drops.“If it’s a long name — a really long name — it’s going to be tricky,” he said.He reassured himself, his voice trailing off.“If Severiano Ballesteros can get into that gap.” More