Spaniard’s petulance, Kuchar’s thrifty touch and Holmes’s slow play sit uneasily with the public but Tiger Woods offers hopeThe World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship is an unlikely saviour for the sport. At the first staging of this tournament, in 2017, players and caddies were affected by sickness to such an extent that an emergency ward by the 18th green would have been a valid addition. The impact on last year was inevitable; Rory McIlroy gave the event a miss despite a $10m prize pot, as again did Jason Day. The tournament seen by many as a beacon of light, having prised WGC status away from the Donald Trump-owned Doral site in Miami, was floundering. Related: Fifty seconds for a one-foot putt:...
Steven Soderbergh’s basketball drama probes the fraying covenant between white power brokers and their mostly black labor forceSteven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird, written by the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney and available for streaming on Netflix, is the finest movie ever made about the business of professional sports, not for the answers it purports to give about a billion-dollar industry charged by undercurrents of race and politics but the questions it asks. Related: High Flying Bird review – Soderbergh scales new heights on Netflix Continue reading...
As the Six Nations enters its rest weekend, it’s worth watching MLR online to see a league which is beginning from rugby’s glorious basicsRecently, Major League Rugby commissioner Dean Howes called rugby union “a great stadium sport”. Related: Major League Rugby: New York and Toronto expand reach in season two Related: HR McMaster on rugby: 'The warrior ethos is what a good team has' Related: 'It's in my blood': how rugby managed to unite America's elite Continue reading...
Few saw the parting coming but it demonstrates the impermanence of the player-coach relationship at the top of world tennisNaomi Osaka splitting with her coach, Sascha Bajin, after little more than a year and two grand slam triumphs together shocked many people in tennis but, if the world No 1 wants no more than to explore new strategies and schedules, it could lift her even further away from her rivals.They announced the divorce on Twitter on Monday and have issued no statements since. The Japanese media are speculating they started to grow apart towards the end of the Australian Open last month, claiming she did not agree with some of his ideas and even practised alone, but that did not...
The free agent succeeded by starting a conversation, but for at least one week of breathless hype it was almost impossible to hearSix years ago this week, a 25-year-old mid-season injury replacement for the San Francisco 49ers stepped onto the field at the Superdome in New Orleans, becoming only the fourth quarterback to start in a Super Bowl in the same season as his first career start. So much has transpired in the time since Colin Kaepernick’s metamorphosis into the most divisive figure in American sports, and one could argue society at large, that it’s easy to forget the overnight sensation he generated as a mostly anonymous understudy in dizzying ascent, captivating the country with his rare blend of arm...