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      PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan Steps Back after ‘Medical Situation”

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      The tour did not elaborate on Jay Monahan’s condition but said two other executives would oversee operations during his absence.The PGA Tour said Tuesday night that Jay Monahan, its commissioner, was “recuperating from a medical situation” and that two of its other executives would oversee the tour’s day-to-day operations for the time being.The tour’s four-sentence statement came one week after Monahan, 53, announced that the tour had reached a partnership deal with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which bankrolled the LIV Golf league that has clashed with Monahan’s circuit for more than a year.Monahan, the tour’s commissioner since 2017, was one of the lead negotiators during the secret talks, which led to a deal that has stirred a furor among players, outrage on Capitol Hill and the prospect that the Justice Department will seek to block the arrangement. He has spent recent days crafting a response to a crush of opposition to the deal, including a session with players he called “heated,” a contentious news conference, a town-hall meeting with tour employees in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and a pointed letter to lawmakers in Washington.The tour did not elaborate on Monahan’s condition but said that its board “fully supports Jay and appreciates everyone respecting his privacy.”The tour did not give a timeline for Monahan’s return and said that Ron Price, the circuit’s chief operating officer, and Tyler Dennis, the president of the PGA Tour, would take charge in the interim.Monahan has worked for the tour since 2008, with stints as its chief operating officer, its chief marketing officer and as executive director of the Players Championship. Under the deal that Monahan helped broker this spring after he spent months condemning the rush of Saudi cash into men’s professional golf, the moneymaking components of the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the DP World Tour are to be housed in a new company.Monahan is expected to be its chief executive, and Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi wealth fund, is in line for its chairmanship. Monahan and his lieutenants have insisted that the company’s structure, which allows for extensive Saudi investment, will give the PGA Tour ultimate authority over the most elite tiers of professional golf. But al-Rumayyan’s role and the potential for significant infusions of Saudi cash have helped stir doubts about the extent of Monahan’s authority.It is not clear when the deal will close, but the agreement has been the subject of intense discussion and skepticism among players at the U.S. Open, where competition is scheduled to begin Thursday at the Los Angeles Country Club. More

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      Tiger Woods, Forced to Miss the U.S. Open, Is Everywhere

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      Who can forget Woods’s U.S. Open win by 15 strokes at Pebble Beach in 2000, or his 19-hole playoff in 2008 at Torrey Pines? “It does feel wrong that he’s not here,” his fellow Californian Max Homa says.The U.S. Open will be played in Los Angeles this week for the first time in 75 years, and there is a predominant California theme to the event. Many of the top contenders at the tournament grew up nearby. More than a dozen in the field were raised in California or call it home.All of which makes it seem almost wrong, or cruel, that the best California golfer in history will not be competing. Tiger Woods, who grew up in Cypress, Calif., about 30 miles from the site of this year’s national golf championship, is unable to play at the Los Angeles Country Club after ankle surgery in April. It will be the ninth major championship Woods has had to skip, or leave prematurely, since the harrowing 2021 car crash that nearly led to a leg amputation and has significantly inhibited Woods’s ability to play, and walk, a golf course since.Not surprisingly, even in absentia, Woods’s presence is felt. Especially here. Especially at the U.S. Open, which Woods has won three times — usually in dramatic, unforgettable fashion.Although, as Max Homa, a California native and the world’s seventh-ranked golfer, said as he practiced his chipping on Tuesday morning: “Tiger is so transcendent that you could argue that he’s especially missed at any event anywhere. But yeah, it does feel wrong that he’s not here. That’s fair to say if you look at the history of the game.”Fans in Tiger Woods branded gear around the course at the U.S. Open.Meg Oliphant for The New York TimesCollin Morikawa, who was born in Los Angeles two months before Woods won his first major championship in 1997 and who has since won the P.G.A. Championship and British Open, said Woods’s influence on golf was so great that he wondered how many of today’s best players would even be playing the game this week if not for him.“He’s maybe not the sole reason why we got involved in the game,” Morikawa said of Woods, and then added, “But for me growing up, he’s all I cared about.”With a smile, Morikawa went on to describe how he had enjoyed getting to know major champions like Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas in recent years.“But I didn’t care about them when I was growing up — I really didn’t,” Morikawa said. “People ask me about the history of Rory winning this or certain guys winning that. I didn’t really care. I only cared about Tiger.“So, yeah, I think he’s always missed. But he’s always going to impact this game in ways that we can’t even describe, in ways that we don’t even know.”Woods, whose total of 15 major championship victories is second only to Jack Nicklaus’s 18 titles, has also seemed to save some of his most memorable performances for when the U.S. Open arrived in his home state.In 2000, at Pebble Beach Golf Links, he won by an astounding 15 strokes, which set the event record for largest margin of victory. Eight years later at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego, Woods, who had not played for two months because of two stress fractures and a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left leg, managed to tie for the tournament lead with Rocco Mediate after four grueling rounds.Woods on his way to winning the 100th U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in 2000.Elise Amendola/Associated PressA playoff the next day put Woods through 19 more taxing holes before he claimed the championship.Those were Woods’s U.S. Open highlights, but he has also had six other top 10 finishes. The last decade, however, has largely reflected the decline in Woods’s physical well-being. Now 47, he last played the U.S. Open in 2020, when he missed the cut. In the previous nine U.S. Opens, he was in the field only five times. He missed the cut twice, and his best result was a tie for 21st.Since his inspirational victory at the 2019 Masters, Woods has only completed four rounds at a major championship four times. Which brings to mind Woods’s plaintive comment on the eve of this year’s Masters: “I don’t know how many of these I have left.”In that way, his absence at this week’s U.S. Open is another reminder that Woods is being forced to cede the spotlight he has commanded for more than 25 years.But those following in his considerable wake are not allowing him to be forgotten.“His presence in the game of golf is always known because he’s impacted this game in ways that some of us could only dream of,” Morikawa said. “For him, it’s just about getting healthy at this point. Who knows when we’re going to see him or not? I don’t think any of us take that for granted anymore.”Late Tuesday morning, practicing with the Los Angeles skyline in the background, Homa was asked if California golfers had a sense of pride that Woods was one of them.“Maybe it goes deeper,” Homa answered. “I find a sense of pride in the fact that the best golfer of all time grew up playing on a very average municipal golf course. So did I.“I don’t know if it’s a California thing — but I do think that’s just cool.” More

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      At The U.S. Open, Golfers Are Focused On LIV’s Merger With PGA Tour

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      Golfers competing in Los Angeles this week were caught off guard by the news that the PGA Tour and LIV had planned to join forces. Now they have to try to win a major.Jon Rahm was at home last Tuesday, preparing coffee with his children underfoot, when the news arrived in a flood of text messages. Collin Morikawa glanced at Twitter and saw the word there. During breakfast at Michael Jordan’s private club in Florida, Brooks Koepka peered at a television and glimpsed a headline.What was clear Tuesday — one week after the PGA Tour said it intended to join forces with the Saudi wealth fund whose LIV Golf league had fractured the sport — was that the deal Rahm, Morikawa and Koepka heard about in real time had been golf’s version of a flash grenade: stunning, staggering, disorienting.And now, the effects lingering, they need to play the U.S. Open, a major tournament, which will begin Thursday at Los Angeles Country Club. Some escape, huh?“I think there’s more guys that are puzzled about what the future holds,” Jason Day, who had a stint as the world’s top-ranked player soon after he won the 2015 P.G.A. Championship, said in an interview by a practice putting green.“Some guys are emotional, I think, on both sides, which is very much understandable,” added Day, a PGA Tour fixture who turned professional in 2006. “I think we’ve just kind of got to let things settle and see where things are spread out on the table once we kind of know where things are progressing.”It is hardly an optimal outlook just before the third men’s major championship of the year. But it is a pervasive one, and it will assuredly aid the United States Golf Association’s preference for Opens that compel players to use their minds as much as their clubs.No Open in recent memory may demand more compartmentalization from the field.“There’s not really a part of your game in any major championship, let alone a U.S. Open, that can really be in doubt,” Jon Rahm said.Meg Oliphant for The New York Times“There’s a lot of not-answered questions,” Rahm, who opened the 2023 majors cycle with a victory at the Masters Tournament in April, said on Tuesday. “It’s tough when it’s the week before a major. Trying not to think about it as much as possible.”For many of the elite players who could contend for the trophy this weekend in Los Angeles, turbulence in their professional lives, aside from driving, chipping and putting, has been historically scarce.The PGA Tour was unchallenged as the world’s premier circuit for most of a period that began during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency, and the players who kept their tour cards were rewarded handsomely for performing well in events from Torrey Pines in San Diego to Sea Pines in Hilton Head Island, S.C.LIV’s thunderous emergence last year proved a most severe test of the tour’s supremacy and cast a haze over professional golf. For the first time in generations, the PGA Tour was not the unrivaled signature show in American men’s golf.Now, with the PGA Tour and LIV poised to amass their moneymaking ventures inside one new company led by the tour commissioner and chaired by the Saudi wealth fund’s governor, the dimensions of professional golf are hazier, even for the sport’s biggest names.Will LIV exist in a year’s time? How might players who defected from the tour to LIV be allowed to return? Should golfers who remained devoted to the tour be compensated for their loyalty? And what about all of that money, said to be $100 million or more in some instances, that the wealth fund promised LIV golfers?The deal emerged from seven weeks of secret talks that began with a WhatsApp message on April 18, continued in London, Venice and San Francisco, and culminated in an announcement in New York last Tuesday. Much about the framework agreement, though, is unclear, with bankers and lawyers still rushing to fill in blanks on matters as weighty as asset valuation. Golf executives have suggested that months could pass before the deal closes, and some are privately acknowledging that the shoals before and beyond a closing may not be easy. (“I don’t have enough information about the deal yet to have an unfavorable or favorable view about it,” Patrick Cantlay, a player who is on the PGA Tour’s board, said on Tuesday.)In the meantime, some players suggested that they would simply settle for an answer, or answers, to their most essential questions.“We all want to know the why,” Morikawa said. “We’re so interested in the why. For us, for me right now, it’s just like what’s going to happen? I don’t know. But we always want to know that why answer — like, what’s the purpose behind it? But I think there’s so many different parties involved that there’s too many answers to really put it into one underlying umbrella.”Substantive answers are unlikely to emerge between now and Thursday’s first tee shots, leaving players to wonder and worry ahead of a tournament that can earn any one of them a spot in history.For Collin Morikawa, the question in the air on the merger seemed to be “Why?”Meg Oliphant for The New York Times“There’s not really a part of your game in any major championship, let alone a U.S. Open, that can really be in doubt,” Rahm said. “You’re going to need to access every single aspect of your game to win a championship like this. I think it becomes more of a mental factor, not overdoing it at home. You can never really replicate U.S. Open conditions.”Koepka, among the finest major tournament golfers ever, signaled that he had tried to excise any talk of the deal during his preparations for a course he played years ago, and primarily remembered for the Playboy Mansion’s presence on the back nine.“There’s four weeks a year I really care about and this is one of them and I want to play well, so I wasn’t going to waste any time on news that happened last week,” said Koepka, the LIV star who tied for second at the Masters in April and then won the P.G.A. Championship in May near Rochester, N.Y.Last Tuesday, he recalled, he saw the news and then went out to practice.The sport itself, after all, is to come center stage on Thursday, and the questions are not fading — or being answered — this week or next or the next.“There is potential of it being a really, really good thing for golf,” Day said. “But I feel like it’s too early to kind of even say anything like that because you just don’t know where things are going to fall.”For now, he said, “I’m trying to win a tournament.”On that much, PGA Tour and LIV golfers agree — once they stop thinking about last week. More

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      Matt Fitzpatrick and Cameron Smith Don’t Know What’s Next After The LIV-PGA Tour Merger

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      “I just don’t know what’s going on,” Fitzpatrick, the reigning U.S. Open champion, said Monday of the PGA Tour’s merger with LIV Golf. “I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on.”A year ago at the U.S. Open, the field was distracted by an entirely new phenomenon in men’s professional golf: Several players who had turned their backs on the PGA Tour to defect to the insurgent LIV Golf circuit would, for the first time, be competing against their former brethren.Golfers had chosen sides in a sport known for individualism, fueling an unfamiliar team-against-team tension.Twelve months later, and days after the seismic news of the American and European tours forming a partnership with LIV Golf, the disruption at the 2022 U.S. Open now seems like an almost inconsequential diversion. Just ask Matt Fitzpatrick, who won that tournament in Brookline, Mass., for his first victory at a major tournament win and also on the PGA Tour.“I seem to remember last year just thinking about the tournament, just the U.S. Open,” Fitzpatrick said on Monday. “It was easier for me to mentally focus on that and be in a better place than obviously all this confusion that’s going on this week.“The whole thing is confusing.”Asked to elaborate on what he found most confusing, Fitzpatrick could not help but chuckle.“Well, I think I just don’t know what’s going on,” he answered. “I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on.”Fitzpatrick mentioned the Saudi Public Investment Fund, known as PIF, whose staggering riches have backed LIV.“Are we signing with the PIF, are we not signing with the PIF? I have no idea,” he said, adding: “It’s pretty clear that nobody knows what’s going on apart from about four people in the world.”To prove that disorientation was universal across golf, Cameron Smith, who joined LIV not long after winning last year’s British Open, followed Fitzpatrick into the interview room at the Los Angeles Country Club and essentially admitted he was clueless as to what was coming next in his chosen occupation.Smith might rate as something of an insider since he at least received a phone call from Yasir al-Rumayyan, who oversees the PIF and would be the chairman of the new company formed by combining the tours, about the blockbuster deal announced last week.It was a good thing al-Ruymayyan called because Smith said his first reaction to the news was that, “it was kind of a joke.” But al-Rumayyan informed Smith otherwise — without much detail.“He didn’t really explain too much,” Smith said. “I think there’s still a lot of stuff to be worked out, and as time goes on, we’ll get to know more and more. I think he was calling a few different players, so the call was kind of short and sweet.”Despite a lack of clarity about the future of professional golf, both Fitzpatrick and Smith were nonetheless asked about two hot topics since the PGA Tour-LIV deal was announced.For Fitzpatrick, there was the question of whether he thought players, like himself, who were loyal to the PGA Tour should be compensated for turning down the gobs of money LIV was offering.At first, Fitzpatrick appeared ready to address the issue, which is perhaps the most charged and dicey detail to be hammered out in the coming weeks or months. But then Fitzpatrick paused. And paused. He smiled and then exhaled. His eyes roamed the room. Finally, he said with a thin smile: “Yeah, pass.”Fitzpatrick last Friday at the Canadian Open, where he finished eight under for the tournament in a tie for 20th.Minas Panagiotakis/Getty ImagesSmith was asked if he had been given any indication that the LIV tour would continue to exist after this year. He replied: “I really know as much as you guys know, to be honest. I haven’t been told much at all. I guess if anything comes up, I’ll let you guys know.”He refused to answer a question about whether he would want to return to the PGA Tour if LIV was dissolved after this season, calling it “hypothetical.”But he added: “I think I’ve made the right decision anyway. I’m very happy with where I’m at. I obviously made that decision for a few different reasons. Like I said, I know as much as everyone else, and it’s going to be interesting to see how the next few months, maybe even year, kind of plays out.”Smith’s attitude was jovial, which matched the mood of several LIV players who slapped hands with each other and smiled on the practice range on Monday.“I haven’t been told much at all, but I’m just taking it as it goes along,” Smith said. “But there’s definitely a lot of curious players, I think, on both sides as to what the future is going to look like.”Fitzpatrick had an eye on the future and also the past, recalling last year’s U.S. Open fondly.“An amazing week,” he said, hoping to rekindle the magic he discovered.But then, so much has changed in a year. On Monday, there remained one question above all the others. What next for golf?Fitzpatrick shook his head.“I’ll be completely honest, I literally know as much as you,” he said. “I’m sure everyone has gotten questions about it. I found out when everyone else found out. Yeah, honestly, I know literally nothing.” More

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      Phil Mickelson Interviewed in Antitrust Inquiry Into Pro Golf

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

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      The Importance of Oak Hill to Curtis Strange

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      He captured the United States Open there in 1989, becoming the first player in decades to win consecutive Opens.In June 1989, Curtis Strange made history at Oak Hill Country Club near Rochester, N. Y., the site of the P.G.A. Championship, which starts on Thursday.Trailing Tom Kite by three strokes with one round to go, Strange shot an even-par 70 to become the first player since Ben Hogan in 1951 to win back-to-back United States Opens. Strange had captured the 1988 Open by four shots over Nick Faldo in an 18-hole playoff.“Move over, Ben,” Strange said after the final round in 1989. It was his 17th and final tour victory.Strange, 68, reflected recently on his week at Oak Hill and what the top players in the world will likely encounter in this second major of the season.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.What was your mind-set going into the final round?I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. To go out and shoot a solid round of golf and hopefully some putts would fall, and I would shoot one or two under par. That was not a big ask for me. The one big memory was when I got word that [Kite] had made a triple at five. That’s when the adrenaline ran through my body.How did you find out about his triple bogey?I was walking to the eighth tee, the seventh tee maybe. I heard rumors. I asked somebody in the crowd, ‘Is it true?’ They said yes. It got me one back or something at the time.The line, ‘Move over, Ben,’ was that totally spontaneous?Totally spontaneous, made with all due respect for Mr. Hogan. Going into the week, I didn’t know who the last back-to-back champion was.You really didn’t know?When I led after two rounds, I read in the paper the last guy was Ben Hogan.Did you hear from Hogan after your win?No, I didn’t. I wasn’t expecting anything, but I think I was maybe just a little bit disappointed because I had such admiration for him. And for all those guys who paved the way for us. I still admire the guy like I did before.Curtis Strange lining up his putt as his caddie looks on at the 1989 U.S. Open. After his win, he said, “Move over, Ben,” referring to the last golfer to capture two consecutive U.S. Open wins.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesDid you imagine the Open would be your last victory?Not for a long, long time. I had three or four major chances [to win] and got a bit unlucky.Do you place one Open victory over another?The U.S. Open is the U.S. Open. I don’t think you can.What will be the challenges for these guys at Oak Hill?A lot of it is determined by how they decide to set up the golf course, how much rough and how narrow the fairways. There are only two par 5s, and they’re both very long. Par 5s normally are considered catch-up holes where you can make a birdie. Not so much at Oak Hill. They have [two] short par 4s on the back side where you could catch up.They will set it up differently for a P.G.A. than for an Open, right?Last year at Tulsa (the site of the 2022 tournament), it was pretty deep rough. Kerry Haigh, who has done a marvelous job in the P.G.A.; I’m sure he’ll do another one. All depends on how he wants to set it up. He’s always let the players play a little bit.Does the P.G.A., as a major championship, get enough respect?I think they do now with the May date. The August date was late in the year for the viewership and the players. The May date was a home run for them.With your dad having been a club pro, was it especially disappointing that you never won a P.G.A.?It was always at the very top of my list because of that. It’s the P.G.A. of America [an organization of golf professionals].In the 1989 P.G.A., when you tied for second, what do you remember?It’s the one Payne Stewart won, but Mike Reid should have won. I played very, very well on Sunday and didn’t putt as well as I needed to putt to win and had a chance on the last hole. I had a good opportunity. More

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      Matt Fitzpatrick Talks About Life After Winning a Golf Major

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      Having won the U.S. Open in June, Fitzpatrick could triumph at the BMW PGA Championship.In June, Matt Fitzpatrick’s life changed when he won the U.S. Open at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., by one stroke over Will Zalatoris and Scottie Scheffler.That’s what happens when a golfer breaks through to capture one of the sport’s four major tournaments. However, Fitzpatrick, who is from England, fares from here he will be forever known as a major champion.Fitzpatrick, 28, who will play in this week’s BMW PGA Championship at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England, spoke recently about his victory at the Open. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.Did you hear from anyone after the Open victory that surprised you?I’ve been really lucky. I’ve had quite a few messages from various people — one in particular, a text from Michael Jordan. I’m a member of his club down here in Florida; I do most of my practice there. To receive that was very special. I received a handwritten note from Ben Crenshaw. I really appreciate that as well.What did Michael say in the text?He just said, congratulations.Has the Open victory made you alter your goals for the future or your perception of yourself?I always felt like the work I put in was good enough to compete in a major. Whether it was good enough to win one, I was never sure because I had never given myself a chance up until the U.S. P.G.A. [Championship]. To win one backed it up that what I was doing is correct.Have you been prepared for all the demands on you?I was briefed, basically, as soon as I won by my manager, Ted Brady, and Mark Steinberg. I understand that. This is my ninth year as a pro. I know what it’s like to do media. Obviously, it’s just another level when you’re a major champion; there’s just more of it. I kind of knew what was to come.Did your performance at the P.G.A. Championship go a long way toward having confidence down the stretch at Brookline?I think so. Maybe I didn’t realize it right after, but certainly that week at the U.S. Open, I probably used some of that experience from the P.G.A.Fitzpatrick plays from the 11th tee during his second round of the 150th British Open in July on Scotland’s St. Andrews golf course.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse via Getty ImagesA few years ago, you talked about how you were working on your approaches. All that work paid off, didn’t it?I struggled out of fairway bunkers all year, but to hit that shot there [on the final hole] under the pressure and in the moment will obviously live with me forever. In general, my approach play this year, we changed my technique a little, and that’s really helped.How does the Wentworth course suit your game?I like the golf course. It’s demanding tee to green. I feel a strength of mine is off the tee. I love playing there, and having the atmosphere of a home crowd is also a big advantage in my opinion, too.You’ve played well there but said you haven’t really challenged to win. Any particular reason?I just feel the guys have played better than me. I never really got close enough, and the one year I did, I just had a bad Saturday. Didn’t drive it well and kind of lost my momentum from the first two rounds, and that was it.You were critical of St. Andrews two months ago. Any regrets with what you said?No, not really. I’m very picky when it comes to golf courses, the ones I like and don’t like. I’ve never played it that firm and fast, and maybe that emphasized my opinion on it more than anything. I feel like sometimes you can hit good shots at St. Andrews and not get rewarded. Sometimes you can hit bad shots and get away with it.When you were a kid, did you dream you would be a major champion in your 20s?I read various quotes from other major winners saying it wasn’t as good as what they thought it was going to feel like, and mine was the complete opposite. It was 10 million times better than I ever thought it would feel. For me, it’s the greatest feeling I’ve ever had. More

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

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