The European Tour breaks new and controversial ground in the Middle East this week, with Justin Rose among the players being paid up to $1m to compete in the Saudi InternationalIn a flawlessly manicured instance of cosmic timing, last Sunday saw Justin Rose become the sixth golfer to surpass $50m in PGA Tour earnings. With his win at the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego, the world No 1 now sits on a total of $51.02m, and counting. That, however, does not include his European Tour earnings, which currently stand at a further €27.25m. And counting. Related: European Tour makes a serious bogey in visiting Saudi Arabia | Ewan Murray Continue reading...
Russia’s equivalent of Grimsby Town overcome odds with the help of some powerful friends but crowd-pleasing morality tale is not quite what it seemsThe second-division team from a distant and ill-favoured coastal town are in the cup final. They’re playing in a big stadium against the country’s most glamorous and history-laden club. They go two goals down, and a pall of inevitability settles over the match. But then, suddenly, they start to score. The first goal receives applause. The second gets a cheer. When the third goes in, the place erupts. Related: ‘This debt must be settled’: IAAF extends Russia’s doping ban Continue reading...
Tribal loyalty has been taken too far when supporters pontificate on an area that has nothing to do with football as if they are debating an offside decisionIt seems an odd detail now but the first person to find oil in Abu Dhabi was the deep sea explorer Jacques Cousteau, who was employed by a British-run expedition to look for telltale signs in the ocean floor. Modern-day oil prospecting involves satellite imaging and infrared. Back in the 1950s the state of the art was a broodingly handsome celebrity diver in a pair of Speedos.It worked, though. In those days the Persian gulf was a coral paradise, home to a booming pearl diving trade. You wonder if, down in the glitter...
It is tempting to call Fifa’s corruption debacle a gift that just keeps on giving. Except it feels like something else by now, a gift that has, frankly, given too muchAre you feeling it yet? The Fifa corruption fatigue? It has, after all, been seven years in the making, from the oddly homespun excesses of the whistleblower Chuck Blazer, football’s own mobility scooter Liberace; to the cold, gangsterish disdain of the Grondona-Teixeira-Leoz axis, the kind of Fifa men who would carve out your liver with an ivory-inlaid oyster knife if it meant getting a step closer to a secret six-figure TV rights access sweetener.This week the US justice department court case sparked into life in New York. Its first few...
The quiet but effective way Kaepernick has created the take a knee movement would resonate with the baseball legend whose brilliance helped combat the terrible racism he encountered in the 1940s and 50sWhen Time magazine conducted a poll in 1947 with the aim of identifying the most popular person in the United States, Bing Crosby came out on top. Close behind was Jackie Robinson, the baseball player who, earlier in the year, had become the first African American to compete in the major leagues. Not everyone had cheered that seismic event. Some teams threatened to strike rather than play against a team including Robinson. Individual opponents greeted his appearance on the field with shouts of “Hey, nigger, why don’t you...