Brazil is unsure whether to host the Copa América and attending Euro 2020 will be arduous but it is the way for nowIt was one of the more remarkable episodes in a PGA Tour season. Jon Rahm, having stepped from the 18th green on completion of his third round at Muirfield Village, put head in hands after being spoken to by tournament officials. His caddie batted aside a camera crew as they pursued what was evidently a breaking story. The simple inference was that Rahm had been told that someone close to him was seriously ill; or worse.As it transpired, Rahm had tested positive for Covid‑19. It had been a complex process, instigated by him being identified as a contact...
Eisenhower’s drinking partner and the man who helped make the Masters what it is today surely deserves more recognitionTucked away in a corner of YouTube sits the kind of cheesy 1976 sales pitch Augusta National had to make to Asia decades before Hideki Matsuyama came along. Cigarettes, whisky and terrain far less manicured than is the case for Masters of this day and age feature. So, too, Philip Russell Wahl Sr.“We have had the finest group of players, the greatest competitors, on our golf course,” says Wahl. “That’s what makes the Masters great.” And then the payoff: “The Masters is my life.” Related: Hideki Matsuyama is Japanese but his victory matters for Asian Americans Related: Gary Player’s apartheid history is...
Player invited Lee Elder to play in South Africa and was praised by Nelson Mandela but admits his past is not blamelessIt has been almost 50 years since Lee Elder became the first black man to play in the Masters, and five months since Augusta National announced they were at last going to mark his achievement by inviting him to join Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player as one of the tournament’s honorary starters.So long that when the moment finally came around early on Thursday morning, Elder, who is 86, wasn’t able to get up and swing a club. Instead he sat and watched as Player and Nicklaus did. It was a poignant moment, despite the way Player’s son (and caddie)...
Plenty are immune to the Masters’ idiosyncratic charms, but I find myself in pandemic exile pining for the place The second weekend in April brings the Masters and with it all manner of pressing questions. Like whether Rory McIlroy just might, if Lee Westwood really could, or Bryson DeChambeau really should. Then: whether to go for egg salad or pimento cheese, take your ice tea sweet or not, and if you have any room left for another Georgia peach ice cream sandwich. These last are surely the greatest contribution Augusta National’s chairman emeritus, Billy Payne, made to the game during all his years in charge of the club, and ample justification for his somewhat incongruous presence in the World Golf...
His last major was in August 2014, he is in questionable form and has a new swing coach – but Rory McIlroy knows AugustaIf he hadn’t seen such riches he could live with being poor. Any assessment of a run for Rory McIlroy without claiming a major championship – which has now stretched to six years and eight months – comes with yearning. McIlroy at his best provides sporting masterpiece.McIlroy won two of his four majors thus far by eight shots. Albeit the margin of victory at the 2014 Open Championship was far smaller, McIlroy controlled that event from start to finish. Just weeks later at the US PGA Championship, the ease with which he recovered from a mid-round Sunday...