As the European calendar officially shifts to preseason, we take one final look at the best American and Canadian men’s players abroad over the past yearAs the European calendar officially shifts to preseason for the 2022-23 season (and well into the never-ending transfer season, at times the best season), let’s take one last look at the 2021-22 campaign for Americans and Canadians abroad.Here’s a Best XI of Americans and Canadians in Europe from the 2021-22 campaign. Continue reading...
It’s all change at Chelsea after Granovskaia’s exit but the club’s new co-owner, chairman and sporting director has a big taskAs recently as a week ago Marina Granovskaia was telling figures inside football that she had not decided whether to continue working for Chelsea’s new owners. Granovskaia was as active as ever in discussions with agents about potential signings and, despite the director’s long-standing ties to Roman Abramovich, there was a feeling that any announcement about her future would be unlikely until the transfer window was over.That all changed on Monday morning. First came the announcement that Bruce Buck, another associate of Abramovich, had agreed to step down as chairman. Then, in a development that caught a fair few people...
DP World Tour is expected to prevent LIV Golf players such as Phil Mickelson from playing the Scottish Open in JulyThe latest move in golf’s epic power struggle is likely to see those rebels who have committed to the LIV Series prevented from playing in the Scottish Open. Although still to be completely finalised, the sanction is among those expected to be revealed by the DP World, formerly European, Tour in the coming days.The Scottish Open, worth $8m (£6.5m) in prize money, ordinarily forms a key part of Open buildup for scores of players and is a marquee event on the DP World Tour. Entries close on Thursday. Continue reading...
The sport’s arbiters, the R&A and USGA, must find a solution so the Saudi-backed LIV Series can coexist with established toursThe return this week of the US Open to the Country Club in Brookline for the first time since 1988 would ordinarily be a cause for reflection. The 1999 Ryder Cup there was laced with controversy after a ferocious European reaction to premature US celebrations.There will be only passing reference to Curtis Strange’s playoff success over Nick Faldo. Sam Torrance and his famous broadside – “Tom Lehman calls himself a man of God. That was not the behaviour of a man of God” – likewise. Even the course setup presided over by the United States Golf Association, an annual debating...
Golf can offer sublime entertainment but is not a sport with any deep sense of social conscience. Why pretend otherwise?The centre cannot hold. All that is pure is gone. They’re shaving Aslan’s mane up there at the Centurion Club in Hemel Hempstead. And it has, of course, been genuinely shocking to see the grand old community game of professional golf, with its deep social ties, the beating heart of our post-industrial towns, reduced so easily to a row of shrugging men in leisure wear doing stuff on their own for money.This is after all the people’s game, or at least the People Like Us game, still played on every cobbled street and in every playground, providing that playground is at...