Alliance with PGA and DP World Tours sparked talk of an end for the startup but this elite golf element carries momentumAlmost 13 months have passed since the confirmation that a wind of change had swept through golf. In sleepy, leafy Hertfordshire, LIV Golf teed off against the backdrop of intense acrimony and serious doubts. “Golf, but louder” was the chosen advertising slogan.It was golf, but jitterier. Players looked over shoulders, nosy interlopers were concerned about even being spotted in the rebel environment. Partly through concerns over the sportswashing element attached to the LIV plan and partly through the belief that the establishment, the PGA and DP World Tours, could not be overhauled, the tournament at the Centurion Club was...
All evidence suggests the Northern Irishman is close to winning another major – he just needs to believe it himselfRory McIlroy spent much of 2013 in professional turmoil. By the time he shot 79 in his first round at the Open Championship, he admitted to feeling “brain dead” on the Muirfield links. He had already withdrawn from the Honda Classic. An equipment change was taking its toll. So, too, was a weight of expectation created in part by an eight‑shot win at the 2012 US PGA Championship.By autumn of 2014, McIlroy had added another two major championships to his CV. He admitted last week to watching YouTube videos of the Open of nine years ago, where the range of shot-making...
Saudi Arabia’s takeover of golf is a blueprint for the future – would your favourite sport put up any more of a fight?Perhaps you were invited to the exclusive Venice wedding of a billionaire’s daughter where Jay Monahan and Yasir al-Rumayyan are reported to have met for the first time. Perhaps you happened to be playing a round at Beaverbrook Golf Course at the same time as Rumayyan and the PGA board member Jimmy Dunne were thrashing out the early stages of a deal that would change golf for ever. Perhaps you happened to be eavesdropping at the next table as they ate dinner or at least close enough to hurl a well-aimed bread roll or slip something into the...
After becoming the first player in 72 years to win on her LPGA debut, the 20-year-old American could be what’s needed for a tour that’s deeper than ever but wanting for household namesNo sooner had Rose Zhang finished off one of the more extraordinary fortnights in golf history – capping her Stanford career with an unprecedented second NCAA title, ringing in her 20th birthday, entering the professional ranks and immediately becoming the first player to win on her LPGA debut in 72 years – than she was back on a plane to Palo Alto to nail down some unfinished business.Three more final exams. One last problem set for CS-106A, the introductory computer programming course that’s sworn her off coding for...
Regime is using sport as a tool for soft power but has failed to wash away sickening track record on human rightsLooking back, so much of it was already there on that night in Diriyah when a storm raged across the desert and Anthony Joshua made history – and £60m – by retaining his world heavyweight title belts. Not just the good, the bad and the ugly of Saudi Arabia’s sporting ambitions, but the half-truths and accommodations of those willing to take the money and look the other way.One moment from the fight in December 2019 lingers more than most: Joshua absorbing the cheers from the young crowd, many of whom were women in western clothes, before averting his gaze...