Woods, Tiger

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares149 Views

    Tiger Woods Joins PGA Tour Board in Concession to Player Demands

    by

    With the addition of Woods, players will outnumber independent directors, giving them the final say in the tour’s plan to form a partnership with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.Infuriated after being blindsided by the PGA Tour’s pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, a band of leading golfers has won a series of concessions from the beleaguered circuit’s commissioner — including the elevation of Tiger Woods to the tour’s board — in a star-driven rebuke of the tour.The tour announced the changes on Tuesday, one day after dozens of top players wrote to Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, and insisted on significant overhauls.The players, including Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler, said that the secret negotiations toward a tentative deal with the wealth fund had defied the principle that the tour should be committed to players and run by them. In turn, Monday’s letter detailed demands that amounted to a dramatic effort to reclaim power over a circuit that got its modern start after a player rebellion in the late 1960s.Woods, the golfers said, had to be installed on the tour’s board promptly, giving the players a sixth seat, and allowing them to outnumber the independent board members who come from the worlds of business and law. And the players insisted that one of their advisers, Colin Neville of the merchant bank Raine, have sweeping access to the tour’s files while executives try to reach a final deal with the wealth fund.A lasting agreement with the wealth fund, they signaled, would not clear the board unless Neville was able to review the terms with the players.“This is a critical point for the tour, and the players will do their best to make certain that any changes that are made in tour operations are in the best interest of all tour stakeholders, including fans, sponsors and players,” Woods said in a statement.“The players thank Commissioner Monahan for agreeing to address our concerns, and we look forward to being at the table with him to make the right decisions for the future of the game that we all love,” Woods added. “He has my confidence moving forward with these changes.”Sustained support for Monahan was no certainty entering the week. In a striking show of force, more than 40 players, including Woods, the five sitting members of the board and the 16 members of an important advisory council, signed the letter to Monahan.Player outrage over the deal with the wealth fund began about as soon as it was announced in June. The tour hailed the agreement, which seeks to create a new for-profit entity combining the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league with the commercial operations of the tour and the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour, as a step forward for a divided sport.But players had, at most, hours of warning about the deal.Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, at the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Charlotte, N.C., last September.Peter Casey/USA Today Sports, via ReutersInstead, Monahan and two independent board members, James J. Dunne III and Edward D. Herlihy, handled the talks with the wealth fund on the tour’s behalf without informing other board members. A handful of players, including board members like McIlroy, were told of the agreement shortly before it was announced. Most of the rest of the tour’s players found out about it when it became public.Time did not diminish their misgivings.“We still don’t really have a lot of clarity as to what’s going on, and that’s a bit worrisome,” Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player and a golfer normally eager to stay out of the tour’s internal politics, said last month. “They keep saying it’s a player-run organization, and we don’t really have the information that we need.”In recent weeks, according to a person with knowledge of the deliberations, players have spoken privately about the changes they would want to see from the tour to which they had remained loyal. Monday’s letter to Monahan reflected those conversations, and Monahan swiftly agreed.The commissioner and his tour have been the targets of ferocious criticism, in part because an agreement with the Saudis had seemed so improbable after a year marked by acrimony.In 2022, LIV began poaching top tour players, including Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, starting an all-out war for the future of golf. Players sued the PGA Tour, saying it had illegally discouraged players from joining LIV, and the tour countersued. The tour also highlighted Saudi Arabia’s human rights record at every turn, with Monahan memorably asking on national television, “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”The tentative agreement ended the litigation between the parties, but otherwise lacked many substantive binding commitments. That hasn’t halted the intense questioning about how the tour’s campaign against the Saudis so quickly morphed into an embrace that leaves the wealth fund poised to hold enormous sway over golf.Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are targeting the tour’s tax-exempt status, and tour leaders went before a congressional subcommittee last month to answer questions about the agreement. The Department of Justice is scrutinizing whether the tour violated antitrust law, scrutiny that has already scuttled one part of the deal.But the players have always been among the biggest roadblocks to a final agreement. When LIV offered exorbitant sums to players to defect — LIV’s chief executive Greg Norman has said that Woods turned down north of $700 million — many decided to stick with the tour. They spoke with disdain for LIV’s team golf concept, its weaker fields and even the length of its events, and joined the chorus accusing Saudi Arabia of using golf to burnish its image.Then came the agreement and, soon, the uprising.The tour said last week that Neville, the banker, would advise the players on a potential deal and that they would have a say in choosing a new independent board member to replace Randall Stephenson, the former AT&T chairman who resigned after being left out of the loop on negotiations with the Saudis. The tour also said it was devising a “financially significant” plan to compensate players who did not take LIV’s money, and it signaled again that LIV players who want to return to the tour were likely to face penalties.Monday brought a new set of demands and swift acquiescence from tour leaders.A board seat for Woods is no guarantee of player unanimity, however. What the richest and best known players in the world want out of a final agreement could differ from what the fringe tour professionals, who are far more numerous, desire.Woods, who won his 15th major championship in 2019 but has rarely played since because of major injuries, has declined to join LIV and bitterly criticized its style of play, but his views on a potential agreement with the investment fund are unknown. He has not said anything publicly about the tentative agreement, and his agent, Mark Steinberg, has not responded to multiple requests for comment.No current player, though, commands as much public influence as Woods — just as no current player has as much private power as he does. Even during his convalescence, Woods has remained in close touch with some tour golfers, many of whom attribute the circuit’s financial success and contemporary popularity almost entirely to Woods.“When Tiger speaks, his voice is very loud,” Gary Woodland, a U.S. Open winner who turned professional in 2007, said in an interview in June.The players believe that Woods’s arrival on the board, which also includes the P.G.A. of America’s president, will do much to reassure the particularly restive ones in their ranks, some of whom have lately considered potential paths to challenge the tentative agreement with the wealth fund.Players are expected to meet with Monahan next week, when the tour will hold an event in Memphis. More

    More stories

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Golf

      Jiyai Shin Won a British Open at Royal Liverpool. She’s Got Some Advice.

      by

      It is easy to forget, given just how thoroughly Jiyai Shin romped to victory at the 2012 Women’s British Open, that she did not lead from start to finish. But her triumph at Royal Liverpool, the English club often known simply as Hoylake, nevertheless stands as one of the most commanding performances in the tournament’s history.Her message to the world’s top men’s golfers, who will contest their British Open at Royal Liverpool beginning on Thursday, can be summed up in two words: Look out.“Royal Liverpool has a lot of small greens, as well as small, deep bunkers,” Shin, who also won the 2008 Open at Sunningdale, wrote in Korean in response to emailed questions.“There is also wind,” warned Shin, who still plays on the L.P.G.A. of Japan Tour and tied for second at this month’s U.S. Women’s Open. “You have to be patient against the constant toil of the wind.”Jiyai Shin celebrated her victory on the 18th green during the final round of the Women’s British Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in 2012.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe wind may not be the only menace, not at a club with a record of weather headaches at its recent Opens. In 2006, when Tiger Woods won, signs warned of the risk of fires. Eight years later, before Rory McIlroy’s victory, a forecast for thunderstorms led to a two-tee start for the first time in Open history. And when Shin played there in 2012, poor weather led to the third and fourth rounds being condensed into a single day. At the time, she said Hoylake had offered up the “worst conditions I think I’ve ever played.”The coming days could pose problems, too.“My worry is now what the forecast is for Saturday and Sunday, which there’s some uncertainty about which way it will go,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the tournament-organizing R&A, said on Wednesday. “But it’s going to be wet or it’s going to be very wet. We’ll see.”Weather notwithstanding, the course has a distinguished history: No club along the English shore, with the exception of Royal North Devon, is older than Royal Liverpool, which was founded in 1869 and first hosted a British Open in 1897, when the amateur Harold Hilton won. Its men’s Open champions later included Bobby Jones and Peter Thomson.The 151st Open, Shin predicted, “will be the beginning of another history.”No. 1: RoyalPar 4, 459 yardsThere are three bunkers near the green on the par 4 first hole at Royal Liverpool.David Cannon/R&A, via Getty ImagesMore often than not, Royal Liverpool’s first hole will play into the breeze, and there are fairway bunkers on both sides of the hole — right around the distances where many of this week’s players can drive their tee shots.Welcome to the British Open.“It is a dogleg hole that bends slightly to the left, and the width of the green is not wide, making it difficult to put the second shot on the green,” Shin said. “It is advantageous to aim a bit to the right to maintain the flow for the next shot when playing this hole.”There are three bunkers near the green, which hardly has Britain’s smoothest putting surface. Trouble on No. 1 does not necessarily doom a player, though: Shin had a triple bogey there during one round.No. 7: TelegraphPar 4, 481 yardsRory McIlroy on No. 7 during the final round of the British Open at Royal Liverpool in 2014.Ian Walton/R&A, via Getty ImagesWant to make it to the fairway? Hit the tee shot at least 250 yards into what could be a decidedly forbidding wind. Come up short, and you’re probably in the gorse that can be found all over Royal Liverpool. A successful tee shot, though, can position a player for an accommodating second shot toward the green, where two left bunkers lurk nearby.The green has been infused with more tricks since Shin and McIlroy won, but Shin suggested the wind was a greater challenge than the green.“It was difficult to adjust the distance from the second shot to the pin due to the back wind,” she remembered. “A strong wind had the biggest impact on the first bounce.”No. 13: AlpsPar 3, 194 yardsRickie Fowler on the 13th hole at Royal Liverpool in 2014.Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesFew holes are more beloved among Royal Liverpool’s members than No. 13. Mounds obscure the green from the tee box, suggesting that there is not much of a green on the left side.But that’s not true, and there is actually more green on the left than the right.Shin counsels not to expect much bounce from the green, which is diagonal and runs left to right, and she remembers how she “aimed a bit harder at the back of the pin than the front.”And beware the right bunker.“It seems like the club members know a thing or two about golf if they love this difficult hole in particular,” Shin said.No. 17: Little EyePar 3, 136 yardsThere are many perils on the way to the 17th hole at Royal Liverpool.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe British Open has never been played in Wales, but the new 17th hole will bring the competition awfully close: just across Dee Estuary. The raised green awaits players after a spread of bunkers and other perils, so there is little room for error off the tee. There are not many favorable spots for a ball that rolls off the green, either, and the R&A is hoping the hole will infuse some drama as the tournament nears its end on Sunday.Perhaps this is the year of the par-3. At Los Angeles Country Club last month, the course included five par-3 holes for the first time at a U.S. Open since 1947.“Personally, I think par 3 makes the game more exciting,” Shin said. “I think it will be a great hole with a variety of new variables.”No. 18: DunPar 5, 609 yardsOne of five bunkers near the 18th green.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesShin arrived at the 18th tee box during the final round with virtually no chance of losing. The only question, really, was whether she’d win by a double-digit margin.“When I walked up to the hole looking at the grandstands surrounding the green,” she said, “I felt that it was my stage and that I was honored to be there.”It stands to reason that this year’s Open might not have such a runaway winner — the most recent player near Shin’s 2012 mark was Woods in 2000, when he won by eight strokes at St. Andrews — so No. 18 might be a bit more freighted. And it will assuredly be longer after the addition of a new tee, and it will also be narrower. The R&A itself is warning that the fairway can seem “just a handful of yards wide” in some spots off the tee.The hole, the 16th for members and a place where Open players have often used long irons in the past, will veer toward the right, by an extensive and expanded out-of-bounds area, for second shots. If a player can avoid the five bunkers around the green, including the three on the left side, eagle is a possibility.“Since the hole flows from the front to the back of the green, you can aim for the next shot without any worries even beyond the green,” Shin said.On Sunday, weather permitting, someone will stand on that green and hoist the claret jug freshly engraved with his name. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Golf

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

      by

      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

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Golf

      PGA Tour Wanted Greg Norman Ousted as Part of Saudi Deal

      by

      The American circuit’s efforts were made public in documents that Congress released on Tuesday.The PGA Tour sought the ouster of Greg Norman, the two-time British Open champion who became the commissioner of the insurgent LIV Golf league, as a condition of its alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to records that a Senate subcommittee released on Tuesday.The tour and the wealth fund did not ultimately agree to the proposal — crafted as a so-called side letter to a larger framework agreement — and, for now, Norman remains atop LIV. But the deliberations reflect an enmity forged over decades of hostilities between the tour and Norman, one of the most talented players in professional golf history who often chafed at the sport’s economic structure.And they underscore the tensions that could linger if the deal closes.The glimpse into the negotiations between the tour and the wealth fund came as the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations began its first hearing into the arrangement, which calls for the business ventures of the tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour to be brought into a new, for-profit company.The plan is facing significant scrutiny in Washington, where some lawmakers have castigated the tour, once willing to condemn Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, for abruptly growing cozy with an arm of a coercive government. Beyond any congressional misgivings about the wealth fund’s ties to the Saudi government, Justice Department officials are also interested in whether the deal violates federal antitrust laws and whether they should try to block it.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in his opening statement on Tuesday that his subcommittee’s hearing was about “much more than the game of golf.”“It is about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence — indeed even take over — a cherished American institution to cleanse its public image,” Blumenthal, the subcommittee’s chairman, added, citing the kingdom’s record of killing journalists, abusing dissidents and having “supported other terrorist activities, including the 9/11 attack on our nation.”“It is also about hypocrisy, how vast sums of money can induce individuals and institutions to betray their own values and supporters, or perhaps reveal a lack of values from the beginning,” he continued. “It’s about other sports and institutions that could fall prey, if their leaders let it be all about the money.”The proceeding, held in a crowded Capitol Hill room that previously hosted Supreme Court confirmation hearings and meetings of the 9/11 Commission, included two senior PGA Tour leaders: the chief operating officer, Ron Price, and a board member who was intimately involved in the negotiations that led to the tentative deal that was announced on June 6.In an opening statement, Price argued that the tour, faced with the threat of competing with one of the world’s mightiest sovereign wealth funds, had little choice but to seek some measure of coexistence after months of acrimony in court and in jockeying for the allegiances of the world’s best players.“It was very clear to us — and to all who love the PGA Tour and the game of golf as a whole — that the dispute was undermining growth of our sport and was threatening the very survival of the PGA Tour, and it was unsustainable,” Price said. “While we had significant wins in litigation, our players, our fans, our partners, our employees and the charities we support would lose.”Tour leaders have acknowledged that with negotiations for a final agreement still unfolding, board approval is no certainty. Over the weekend, one member of the board, the former AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson, resigned. In a letter about his exit, Stephenson said “the construct currently being negotiated by management is not one that I can objectively evaluate or in good conscience support.”Tour executives have been eager to show how the agreement leaves them positioned to run professional golf’s day-to-day operations. The tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, has been tabbed as the chief executive of the new company, expected to be called PGA Tour Enterprises, and the tour is expected to fill a majority of the company’s board seats.They have been far less keen to discuss how Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, will serve as the chairman of PGA Tour Enterprises and how the framework agreement envisions sweeping investment rights for a Riyadh-based fund whose power and value have swelled in recent years.Neither al-Rumayyan nor Norman agreed to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, citing scheduling conflicts. But documents released by the subcommittee suggest that both will be factors in an inquiry that could last months.The effort to remove Norman was underway by May 24, when the PGA Tour board’s chairman, Edward D. Herlihy, sent a proposed side letter to Michael Klein, a banker working with the wealth fund. The proposal called for Norman, as well as a British outfit central to developing LIV, to “cease” working on LIV within a month of “the management transition to the PGA Tour.”Although Norman’s long-term fate has been uncertain — he was not a part of the negotiations that led to the preliminary deal, stoking questions about his relevance — it was not until Tuesday that it became clear that his future had been a subject of the talks.LIV did not comment on Tuesday, but three people with knowledge of the negotiations, who requested anonymity to discuss private talks, said the wealth fund had rejected the tour’s proposal.The documents that the Senate released also detail the deliberations over when and how to announce the deal; Klein was among the figures who said the tour and the wealth fund should not wait for a final agreement to disclose their newfound peace.And the records show how a British businessman with ties to the wealth fund and its advisers reached out to James J. Dunne III, now a tour board member and one of Tuesday’s witnesses, in December. In an email, the businessman, Roger Devlin, suggested that there could be a pathway to an armistice between the tour and the wealth fund.Dunne, at least at first, declined to engage in a substantive way.Devlin re-emerged in April, warning Dunne that there was “a window of opportunity to unify the game over the next couple of months” before, he thought, “the Saudis will doubledown on their investment and golf will be split asunder in perpetuity.”Although committee investigators told senators in a briefing memorandum that they did not know for certain how Devlin’s April message influenced Dunne, the tour board member contacted al-Rumayyan within days.Dunne, al-Rumayyan and a handful of others met in Britain soon after, starting negotiations that included a number of ideas that did not make it into the five-page text of the framework agreement. Those concepts, outlined in a presentation titled “The Best of Both Worlds,” included Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who had pledged fealty to the tour, owning LIV teams and a “large-scale superstar” team golf event that would feature the world’s top men’s and women’s players.Although the initial deal between the tour and the wealth fund did not include some of those proposals, the final agreement is still being hammered out, a process that could take months.At least as of April, according to documents the Senate released, there was even talk of a deal including memberships for al-Rumayyan at Augusta National Golf Club and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews — two of the most prestigious golf clubs in the world, but ones that are not controlled by the PGA Tour. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Golf

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

      by

      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

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Golf

      The PGA Tour and LIV Golf Merger, Explained

      by

      The announced deal to dramatically change golf is far from complete.The PGA Tour, the world’s pre-eminent professional golf league, and LIV Golf, a Saudi-funded upstart whose emergence over the past year and a half has cleaved the sport in two, have agreed to join forces.The pact is complicated and incomplete, and numerous golfers hate it. They are directing their wrath at the architects of the deal. Let’s start from the beginning.What are the PGA Tour and LIV Golf?The PGA Tour holds tournaments nearly every weekend, mostly in the United States but also in other countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with prize pools worth millions of dollars. The tour has been the home to practically every male golfer you can name: Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer and so on.It has relationships with, but is separate from, the organizations that stage men’s golf’s four majors: the Masters Tournament, the P.G.A. Championship, the U.S. Open and the British Open. (The L.P.G.A., which runs the women’s tour, is separate.)LIV Golf began in late 2021 with the former PGA Tour player Greg Norman as its commissioner and billions of dollars in backing from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which is known as the Public Investment Fund. LIV lured several PGA Tour players, including the major champions Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka, with massive purses and guaranteed payouts that far surpassed what they could earn on the established circuit.LIV promised a sharp break from golf’s fusty traditionalism, starting with its name, which, when pronounced, rhymes with “give” but is actually the Roman numeral for 54, the number of holes played in each tournament. LIV had music blaring at its events, looser dress codes and team competitions — and tournaments that lasted three days instead of four. Further, and of particular appeal to potential players, while the PGA Tour tournaments cut golfers with the worst scores after two rounds, LIV did not cut anyone.What was the relationship between the leagues before the deal to align?Acrimonious, to put it lightly. Players who joined LIV were forced to resign from the PGA Tour — and its European equivalent, the DP World Tour — under the threat of suspension and fines. LIV sued the PGA Tour, and the PGA Tour countersued, litigation that is technically continuing (though the deal is supposed to resolve it).PGA Tour supporters and other critics of LIV said the venture was simply an attempt by the Saudi government to distract attention from its human rights record, while LIV supporters said the PGA Tour was a monopoly that used inappropriate strong-arm tactics to protect its position in big-time sports.And yet now they are combining?Yasir al-Rumayyan, left, who is the governor of the Public Investment Fund and who oversees LIV, would chair the board of the new entity. Former President Donald J. Trump, middle, has hosted LIV tournaments on his courses.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIt seems so. The PGA Tour and LIV announced on Tuesday the creation of a new entity that would combine their assets, as well as those of the DP World Tour, and radically change golf’s governance.The PGA Tour would remain a nonprofit organization and would retain full control over how its tournaments are played. But all of the PGA Tour’s commercial business and rights — such as the extremely lucrative rights to televise its tournaments — would be owned by a new, yet unnamed, for-profit entity that is currently called “NewCo.” NewCo will also own LIV as well as the commercial and business rights of the DP World Tour.The board of directors for the new for-profit entity would be led by Yasir al-Rumayyan, who is the governor of the Public Investment Fund and also oversees LIV. Three other members of the board’s executive committee would be current members of the PGA Tour’s board, and the tour would appoint the majority of the board and hold a majority voting interest, effectively controlling it.When does this take effect?Not yet.First, the idea also has to be approved by the PGA Tour’s policy board, what it calls its board of directors, which includes some people who were left out of the secret negotiations for this deal in the spring.The policy board is made up of five independent directors, including Ed Herlihy and Jimmy Dunne, who helped negotiate the deal. The board also includes five players: Patrick Cantlay, Charley Hoffman, Peter Malnati, Rory McIlroy and Webb Simpson.Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, said Tuesday that there was only a “framework agreement” and not a “definitive agreement,” with many details still to be decided. The definitive agreement needs a vote before it can go forward.And for the rest of 2023, all the tours will remain separate, and all their tournaments will continue as scheduled.And after that?Who knows? This is how Monahan answered questions on Tuesday about what golf might look like in the future.Will LIV continue to exist as a separate golf league? “I don’t want to make any statements or make any predictions.”Will LIV golfers go back to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour? “We will work cooperatively to establish a fair and objective process for any players who desire to reapply for membership with the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour,” Monahan wrote in a letter to players.Will PGA Tour players, many of whom spurned LIV and its huge paydays, receive compensation? Will LIV players somehow be forced to give up the money they were guaranteed? “I think those are all the serious conversations that we’re going to have,” Monahan told reporters.How do players feel about all of this?LIV players like Brooks Koepka seemed to take a victory lap.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesBroadly, LIV players seem to think they have gained a major victory, and they are probably right. They got their cake (huge paydays) and can eat it (a pathway to returning to the PGA Tour), too.Mickelson, the first major player to leave for LIV, tweeted that it was an “awesome day today.” Koepka took a jab at Brandel Chamblee, a former professional golfer and current television commentator, who has been vocally anti-LIV.Many PGA Tour players were less jubilant. They were blindsided by the news, learning of the agreement when the public did, and they did not seem to understand why the tour waged a legal war against LIV and a war of morality against Saudi money, only to invite the wolf into the henhouse.Monahan met with a group of players on Tuesday in Toronto at the Canadian Open, which was set to start in two days, and afterward told reporters it was “intense, certainly heated.”Johnson Wagner, a PGA Tour player, said on the Golf Channel that some players at the meeting called for Monahan’s resignation.“There were many moments where certain players were calling for new leadership of the PGA Tour, and even got a couple standing ovations,” he said. “I think the most powerful moment was when a player quoted Commissioner Monahan from the 3M Open in Minnesota last year when he said, ‘As long as I’m commissioner of the PGA Tour, no player that took LIV money will ever play the PGA Tour again.’”Wagner estimated that 90 percent of the players in the meeting were against the merger.On Wednesday morning, however, McIlroy, perhaps the most influential PGA Tour player not named Tiger Woods, said he was reluctantly in favor of the agreement. McIlroy said he had “come to terms” with Saudi money in golf. “Honestly, I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that this is, you know, this is what’s going to happen,” he said.Rory McIlroy is a member of the PGA Tour’s policy board, which must vote to approve the definitive agreement. McIlroy has been one of the most outspoken players against LIV.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesI see a photo of former President Trump up there. Is he involved in this?Yes, though not directly. The Trump Organization owns golf courses around the world, and Donald J. Trump has for years sought to host major tournaments on its properties. Those efforts suffered a setback after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, as the golf establishment distanced itself from the former president. Most significantly, the P.G.A. of America pulled the 2022 P.G.A. Championship from the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.But Trump had cultivated unusually close ties to Saudi Arabia while president, and Saudi-backed LIV had no problem embracing him. Last year, two LIV events were held at Trump courses, and this year it will be three.Trump’s son Eric said that the agreement between LIV and the PGA Tour was a “wonderful thing for the game of golf” and that he expected tournaments to continue to be held at Trump-owned courses. He declined to comment on whether the Trump family played any role in bringing the two parties together.If the PGA Tour was so against LIV and Saudi money, what changed?Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, at the Players Championship in March. He said the ability to “take the competitor off of the board” while retaining control was a significant factor in the merger.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock“Listen, circumstances change, and they’ve been changing a lot over the last couple years,” Monahan said.Get it? No?“What changed? I looked at where we were at that point in time, and it was the right point in time to have a conversation,” Monahan said.Between the lines, Monahan made it sound like the agreement came down to money and competition, as it often does. To compete with LIV, the PGA Tour has enhanced purses, supported the DP World Tour financially and pursued extremely expensive litigation. “We’ve had to invest back in our business through our reserves,” Monahan said.He also said the ability to “take the competitor off of the board” while retaining control was significant.Can anybody else stop the deal from going through?The Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission or the European Commission could certainly try.For about a year, the Justice Department has been investigating the tight-knit relationship between the PGA Tour and other powerful entities in golf. Among its questions is whether the organizations have exerted improper influence over the Official World Golf Rankings, which determine players’ eligibility for certain events and can be an important factor in their success and income.As part of their deal, LIV and the PGA Tour agreed to drop their dueling lawsuits, but doing so would not necessarily change the Justice Department’s inquiry. If there were any illegal conduct by the PGA Tour, a merger would not prevent the PGA Tour from being punished for it.“The announcement of a merger doesn’t forgive past sins,” said Bill Baer, who led the Justice Department’s antitrust division during the Obama administration.The federal government, through the Justice Department and the F.T.C., also reviews more than 1,000 mergers for approval each year, and the European Commission reviews them for the European Union. Without a definitive agreement, it is not clear whether this might be the type of combination regulators could block or whether they would try to do so.Saudi Arabia seems to have grand sports ambitions. Will it always remain a junior partner to the PGA Tour in golf?As always, Saudi Arabia has the perfect vehicle to gain more control: money.The Public Investment Fund will invest “billions,” according to its governor, al-Rumayyan, into the new for-profit entity. It will also hold “the exclusive right to further invest in the new entity, including a right of first refusal on any capital that may be invested in the new entity, including into the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and DP World Tour,” according to the release announcing the agreement.If the Public Investment Fund invests more money, it will surely demand more board seats and greater voting rights, further tilting control of men’s professional golf toward the kingdom. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Golf

      Judge Rules for Tiger Woods in Dispute With Ex-Girlfriend Erica Herman

      by

      The dispute in a Florida court focused on whether Erica Herman’s claims against the golf star could be heard publicly or only through arbitration.A dispute between the golf star Tiger Woods and a former girlfriend about her right to live in his home must be resolved through arbitration, a Florida judge ruled on Wednesday.The ruling put the spectacle on a path to be handled in private — a victory for Woods, whose lawyers had contended that his nondisclosure agreement with Erica Herman, his former companion, broadly required disputes to be addressed privately through arbitration, not the court system.Lawyers for Herman had cast doubt on the validity of the agreement, in part because they believed that some of Woods’s conduct was sexual harassment. Under a relatively new federal law, a nondisclosure agreement connected to sexual harassment can be declared void, allowing the matter to be heard in a court.But in a decision on Wednesday, Judge Elizabeth A. Metzger of the Circuit Court in Martin County, Fla., backed Woods’s request to order the matter into arbitration and said Herman had not provided “factual specificity for any claim relating to sexual assault or sexual harassment.”The judge also rejected Herman’s request for a hearing to consider what her lawyers had described as “a factual dispute about the alleged formation of the arbitration agreement” since she did not recall signing it. In her decision on Wednesday, Metzger said the agreement “appears on its face to be valid” and that there was “no substantial issue of fact regarding the making or existence” of the pact.Although the ruling, barring a successful appeal, will take the dispute out of public view, lawyers for Herman and Woods used court filings in the months leading up to the hearing to exchange sensational allegations and slights.In Herman’s account, she went to work in Woods’s constellation of business interests in 2014 and became romantically involved with him in 2015. By the end of 2016, she said in a court filing, she had moved into a home with Woods.About six years later, in October 2022, their relationship collapsed. According to Herman, she was told she and Woods would be taking a quick trip to the Bahamas aboard a private plane and went to an airport with him.“But instead of boarding the plane, Mr. Woods told Ms. Herman to talk to his lawyer, and Mr. Woods left,” Herman’s lawyers wrote in a submission to the judge. “Then, Mr. Woods’s California lawyer, out of the blue, told her that she was not going anywhere, would never see Mr. Woods again, had been locked out of the house, and could not return.”According to Herman, she and Woods had an 11-year “oral tenancy” deal, which had about five years remaining at the time of their breakup. In a filing last autumn, Herman’s lawyers estimated that she had suffered more than $30 million in damages.But Woods’s representatives argued that the aftermath of the breakup, including any matters about Herman’s access to the home in a wealthy enclave north of West Palm Beach, should be handled in arbitration. They cited a three-page agreement dated Aug. 9, 2017, the same day a prosecutor said Woods had reached a plea deal in a case that began with a charge of driving under the influence.The immediate legal question before Metzger was not whether Herman’s interpretation of her tenancy arrangement with Woods was correct, but whether her court was the right forum for the matter to be considered.Woods and Herman became romantically involved in 2015 and broke up in October 2022.Rob Prezioso/EPA, via ShutterstockTo fortify their effort to move the dispute into a Florida courtroom, Herman’s lawyers, relying on a largely untested federal law regarding N.D.A.s, argued that Woods had engaged in sexual harassment because the agreement was tied to his personal and working relationships with Herman.“A boss imposing different work conditions on his employee because of their sexual relationship is sexual harassment,” Herman’s lawyers wrote. Beyond the employer-employee relationship, they said, the push by a Woods-established trust to force Herman from the home the couple had shared also amounted to sexual harassment because “the landlord made the availability of her housing conditional on her having a sexual relationship with a co-tenant.”In a filing of their own, Woods’s lawyers depicted Herman as “a jilted ex-girlfriend who wants to publicly litigate specious claims in court, rather than honor her commitment to arbitrate disputes in a confidential arbitration proceeding.”They also denied that she was “a victim of sexual assault or abuse” and warned the court against allowing “Ms. Herman to end-run her obligation to arbitrate her disputes with Mr. Woods with implausible claims of sexual harassment.” Arbitration tangle aside, the trust, citing the length of the oral tenancy arrangement, said in a separate submission that it believed the housing agreement was not governed by a particular Florida law.Woods has played two tournaments this year, most recently the Masters Tournament in April. He withdrew during the third round and underwent ankle surgery less than two weeks later. He has not announced when he expects to return to a competition schedule that was already severely limited after he sustained major leg injuries in a car wreck in February 2021.Mike Ives More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Golf

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

      by

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

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Golf

      At a Flooded Augusta National, Koepka Builds a Lead and Woods Sinks

      by

      Third-round play was suspended midafternoon Saturday. Koepka was alone atop the leaderboard, and Woods was at the bottom. Twenty-two strokes separated them.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The raindrops tumbled toward the turf in sheets, rapping umbrellas on their way down and pooling anywhere they could: in shoes, in plastic beer cups, onto the famously — and, on Saturday, formerly — fiery greens at Augusta National Golf Club.That last part was a problem, since ponds are no place to play a Masters Tournament. Even though he was merely on the seventh hole, Brooks Koepka minded only so much. By the time tournament officials suspended third-round play about 3:15 p.m., he was among only 11 players to have picked up a stroke or more on a cold, mostly miserable Masters Saturday.“That seventh green was soaked,” said Koepka, whose score for the week improved to 13 under par. “It was very tough. I thought I hit a good bunker shot, and it looked like it just skidded on the water, so I’m glad we stopped.”Play is scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday. Koepka will begin with a four-stroke lead over Jon Rahm, who trailed by two at the start of his third round. Everyone else in the 54-man field is at least seven off the lead and expecting a decidedly soft course.People headed for the exit after play was suspended because of heavy rain.“I think it’s going to be gettable,” said Sam Bennett, the amateur from Texas A&M University who is in third place, at six under. “I’m guessing we’re going to still have to play it down since we started playing it down, which might be a little tough,” he added, referring to the requirement that players play the ball as it lies on the fairway, even if it’s dirty. “I’m sure there’s going to be some mud balls out there.”Probably so, since Georgia mud in the spring cannot easily be eliminated by deploying Augusta National’s SubAir system to suck water from greens.All through this Masters week, players and organizers had mused about the threat of rain and the possibility of the first Monday finish since 1983. Tournament officials signaled that they were still hoping to finish the competition as scheduled on Sunday, with the final round set to begin at 12:30 p.m. off the first and 10th tees.It has been a vexing stretch for Augusta National, a club that ordinarily revels in brilliant weather during the Masters. The skies forced two stoppages of play on Friday, so when they cleared enough on Saturday for players to finish the second round and begin the third, it seemed a modest victory.The hours of play were enough for Koepka to find a bunker on No. 2 and make birdie there anyway — for a second consecutive day. (He birdied there on Thursday, too, without the sandy detour.) Rahm also birdied the hole on Saturday, though his back-to-back bogeys, on Nos. 4 and 5, ultimately left him headed out for the afternoon at nine under.For the third round, tournament organizers used groups of three and a two-tee start to try to bank as much golf as they could. When play was suspended, the men at the top of the leaderboard appeared somewhat content.Sam Bennett of the United States lining up a putt before play was suspended.The feeling was much different at the bottom, where Tiger Woods was mired in 54th. He had spent the morning stubbornly striving to produce the best mediocre version of himself, and it had been just enough to make the cut that cast Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas and Bryson DeChambeau out of the tournament much sooner than they would have preferred.So there was Woods, who has not missed a Masters cut since he turned professional in 1996, bundled up with his comrades as if the tournament had transformed into a British Open burdened by rain and wind.One could be forgiven for wondering whether it was worth it.Woods began his third round early Saturday afternoon with a perfect drive off the 10th tee, but his approach shot to the plateau green was short and rolled back into the fairway, leading to a bogey. After three routine pars, Woods, whose swing appeared more stiff as Augusta’s temperatures plunged into the 40s, made an awkward pass at the ball on the 14th tee and hooked it into a line of trees left of the 14th fairway. That led to another bogey.After a drive in the fairway and a safe layup second shot on the par-5 15th hole, Woods’s limp seemed to be more pronounced as he descended the steep hill toward the green. His pitch shot to the green landed on the putting surface but had too much spin and rolled backward into the pond. His next attempt at clearing the water remained on the green, but after two putts, Woods had his first double bogey of the tournament.As he walked onto the tee for the short par-3 16th hole, Woods’s stride looked shorter and his movements constrained. His swing at the golf ball was awkward, and the shot veered left and well short of its target, plopping into the water hazard alongside the hole. His third shot stopped 40 feet from the hole, and two putts later, Woods had registered back-to-back double bogeys, dropping his score for the tournament to nine over.Koepka watched as course workers tried to clear water off the seventh green.Koepka, pursuing his first major victory since 2019, was 22 strokes ahead. He is 30 holes and an iffy weather forecast away from his first Masters title. Sunday morning, the tournament’s official forecast said, could bring a “lingering drizzle.”The meteorologists also added a new feature to the weather update: a Monday forecast, just in case. More