The incredible true story of the time an astronaut played golf on the moon
Over 50 years ago, Alan B. Shepard Jr. played a game of golf that was “out of this world.” Almost 240,000 miles away from Earth, Shepard hit two golf balls on the surface of the moon. Despite being so far away, he found a way to connect with the people back home.
Phil Mickelson has distanced himself from the prospect of captaining the U.S. team at the 2025 Ryder Cup as he says there is too much hostility towards him from PGA Tour players following his switch to the Saudi-backed LIV circuit.
U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson was heavily criticised after his side were beaten heavily by Europe last year.
Changes are expected before the next Ryder Cup in 2025, which will be staged at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, New York.
Six-times major winner Mickelson, 53, played on every U.S. Ryder Cup team between 1995-2018 and was named vice-captain in 2021, but did not feature in 2023.
While he also knows the course well, having twice finished runner-up at the U.S. Open there, he said on the Pat McAfee Show this week that he did not feel he was the “right guy” to captain the side.
“I’m a very divisive character right now, if you will, and I understand that,” he said on the Youtube sports talk show.
“The players on the PGA Tour, there’s a lot of hostilities towards me, and I don’t feel I’d be the best leader for them. “I knew I was going to take some hits going forward, and I’m OK with that. And as a divisive individual, I don’t think I’m the best unifier going forward for the Ryder Cup, and that’s fine because I’ve had so many great memories with it.”
Team Europe have already enlisted 2023 captain Luke Donald for their 2025 campaign. The Englishman is Europe’s first repeat captain since Bernard Gallacher in 1991, 1993 and 1995.
Chris Kirk’s eighth birdie of the day at the 17th lifted him to a one-stroke win over Sahith Theegala in the US PGA Tour Sentry tournament at Kapalua in Hawaii on Sunday.
Kirk’s eight-under-par 65 gave him a 29-under total of 263 on the par-73 Plantation course, where he started the day with a one-stroke lead.
He had pushed the advantage to two strokes with five front-nine birdies.
But Theegala’s run of four straight birdies from the 13th through the 16th had seen him take the solo lead before Kirk responded at the par-five 15th — where he had a 12-foot eagle chance but settled for a birdie.
Theegala, who had 10 birdies in his 10-under par 63, was in the clubhouse on 28-under 264 when Kirk birdied 17, landing his 206-yard second shot two and a half feet from the pin.
“That one on 17 I’ll remember for a long time,” said Kirk, whose par at the par-five 18th was plenty to claim a sixth PGA Tour title.
Kirk had qualified for the elite season-opening event — open to last year’s tournament winners and the top 50 in the FedEx Cup — with a victory last year at the Honda Classic, where he ended a near eight-year title drought.
“It’s unreal,” Kirk said. “It’s just so unexpected. I had a really great off-season and I got a lot of good work done and felt good about the year, but you never really expect to go shoot 29-under.
“It’s unbelievable — still kind of soaking it in,” he said.
Theegala, who won his maiden title in Napa, California, in September, started the day three back and started applying pressure early.
He birdied four in a row from the second through the fifth and added birdies at nine and 11 before his four-birdie burst on the back nine.
He missed the green at the 17th, and while he rolled in a nine-foot par-saving putt he couldn’t take advantage of the par-five 18th.
On another low-scoring day, three-time major winner Jordan Spieth was tied for the lead at 27-under through 15 holes, but a tough lie near the lip of a fairway bunker at 16 led to a bogey and his eight-under par 65 left him alone in third on 265.
Stung by his inability to take advantage of birdie chances at the fifth and sixth, Spieth birdied five in a row from the seventh through the 11th before back-to-back birdies at 14 and 15.
Spieth admitted that he would have expected an eight-under round would be good enough to at least get in a playoff.
“There was just some phenomenal golf played everywhere,” he said.
South Korea’s An Byeong-hun carded a 66 for solo fourth on 266.
Compatriot Im Sung-jae headed a group on 267 after a 10-under 63 that included 11 birdies and gave him 34 birdies for the week — the most ever in a 72 hole PGA Tour event.
Former US Open champion Gary Woodland will return to golf competition at the Sony Open next week after undergoing surgery to remove a brain lesion in September.
Woodland, 39, said in August he would have surgery after attempting to treat the condition with medication.
On November 13 he posted a video of his swing saying he expected to be back in 2024, and he was among the field announced on Friday for the Sony Open at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu — the first full-field event on the US PGA Tour’s 2024 calendar.
“This journey has been very hard but I’m extremely thankful to be progressing and for the unconditional love and support from everyone,” Woodland said in his social media post in November. “You’ve all made this process a little easier for me and my family. Thank you to everyone and I look forward to seeing you all next year.”
Woodland won the 2019 US Open at Pebble Beach, the most recent of his four PGA Tour titles.
Woodland warmed hearts after that victory when he took a moment to make a video call to Amy Bockerstette, a young Arizona golfer with Down Syndrome that Woodland had met and played with during the week of the PGA Tour’s Phoenix Open.
Video of Bockerstette’s confident par save from a bunker in Phoenix, and Woodland’s clear delight in her performance, charmed golf fans when it went viral on social media, the moment sparking a lasting friendship between the two.
In 2023, Woodland finished 94th in the FedExCup standings, making 18 cuts in 24 starts with two top-10 finishes.
World number one Scottie Scheffler was named the 2022-23 US PGA Tour Player of the Year on Wednesday while fellow American Eric Cole captured the PGA Rookie of the Year award.
Scheffler, the 2022 Masters champion, became the first golfer to take Player of the Year honors in back-to-back seasons since 15-time major winner Tiger Woods won three in a row from 2005-2007.
“It’s good,” Scheffler said. “Anything you receive voted on by your peers is very special to me and being able to go home with this trophy two years in a row now is very special.”
World number 41 Cole, the 35-year-old son of pro golfers Bobby Cole and Laura Baugh, was twice a PGA runner-up last season, at the Honda Classic and Zozo Championship in Japan. His mother was the 1973 LPGA Rookie of the Year.
“It’s a huge honor,” Cole said. “It’s an award in golf where you only get one chance to win it, which is a little bit unique. To win that and be voted by my peers is pretty incredible.”
PGA Tour members who played in at least 15 events last season were eligible to vote for the awards from December 1-15, 2023.
Scheffler received 38% of votes for Player of the Year to defeat the four other nominees — 2023 US Open winner Wyndham Clark, 2023 Tour Championship winner Viktor Hovland of Norway, four-time major winner Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland and Spain’s third-ranked Jon Rahm, the reigning Masters champion who announced December 7 he was jumping to the rival LIV Golf League.
Cole, who led the PGA with 554 birdies last season, had 51% of votes for the rookie award to defeat Colombia’s Nico Echavarria and Sweden’s Vincent Norrman and Ludvig Aberg.
Scheffler, 27, defended his Phoenix Open title last year and captured the Players Championship by five strokes for his first titles since taking the green jacket in 2022 at Augusta National. He also captured last month’s Hero World Challenge invitational in the Bahamas.
He had 18 consecutive top-12 finishes in the 2022-23 campaign, a streak topped only by Woods in 2000-01, and in 23 starts had 13 top-five showings, the best run since Woods and Vijay Singh had 13 in 2005.
“I think the body of work I put in last year, with the consistency and finishing top most of the weeks that I played, I was very proud of that consistency, and so yeah, I’m very appreciative of the award,” Scheffler said.
Scheffler broke his own PGA Tour prize money record with $21,014,342, nearly $7 million above his prior mark from the previous campaign.
Only three other players have won the PGA Player of the Year award in consecutive seasons — Fred Couples (1991-92), Zimbabwe’s Nick Price (1993-94) and Woods (1999-2003 and 2005-07).
Scheffler also took the Byron Nelson Award for lowest tour scoring average at 68.63 strokes, the lowest since Woods at 68.05 in 2009.
Uncertainty and controversy over a potential merger with LIV Golf’s Saudi backers loom over the US PGA Tour as its 2024 season tees off Thursday in Hawaii.
The PGA’s tournament of champions, now dubbed The Sentry, again will be played at Kapalua, this time in support of wildfire-devastated host Maui following last August’s tragedy.
A field of 59 will compete in the $20 million opener with four-time major winner Rory McIlroy the only qualified player skipping the event to begin his 2024 campaign later.
Even as the PGA Tour returns to a calendar-year format, the impact of last June’s shock announcement of a framework merger deal with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) and DP World Tour lingers over the series.
Reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm of Spain, who won last year’s Kapalua crown, will not defend his title, having jumped to LIV last month for rich financial guarantees.
That signals the upstart series can drain top PGA talent ahead of LIV’s season openers next month at Mayakoba in Mexico and Las Vegas during Super Bowl week there.
Negotiations between PGA and PIF officials have gone beyond an original December 2023 deadline and still no details have emerged about plans for what a unified PGA-LIV structure would feature even as the rivals plan separate 2024 seasons.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, criticized by many players for keeping details of LIV merger talks secret, said in a memo to players on Sunday that LIV talks were “active and productive” and the PGA was working to extend talks into 2024.
Three of the past five major winners are now with LIV Golf — Rahm, 2023 PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka and 2022 British Open winner Cameron Smith — even though its lack of world ranking points means fewer LIV golfers qualify for majors.
For now, the only events where LIV and PGA rivals will compete are the majors, which this year feature the Masters on April 11-14 at Augusta National, the PGA Championship at Valhalla on May 16-19, the US Open at Pinehurst on June 13-16 and the British Open at Royal Troon on July 18-21.
Tiger Woods, a 15-time major winner and member of the Tour Policy Board that must approve any LIV deal, said last month he was “pleased at the process and how it has evolved” in PIF talks but frustrated by its slowness.
Asked how a merged PGA-LIV series would work, Woods said, “The answer is murky,” citing a large number of possibilities and trying to find what works best for players.
“I’m confident a deal will get done in some way,” Woods said. “We’re working together. We’re trying to get a deal done for the tour and for all parties involved.”
Until then, the PGA Tour’s revamped 2024 schedule includes eight “signature” tournaments, starting this week, in a 36-event lineup ending with 70 players qualifying for the FedEx Cup playoffs that conclude September 1.
Other signature events, with limited fields and higher prize money, include Pebble Beach, Riviera, Bay Hill, the Heritage a week after the Masters, Quail Hollow and the Memorial Tournament and Travelers Championship in the weeks before and after the US Open.
The PGA Tour worked Sunday to extend a deadline into 2024 for finalizing a merger agreement with Saudi Arabian investors, tour commissioner Jay Monahan calling talks “active and productive.”
The update to players in a memo from Monahan came hours ahead of the year-end deadline to approve a framework agreement merging the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) that finances the upstart LIV Golf League.
An update on the PGA Tour website regarding talks said the memo, which reportedly was obtained by The Golf Channel and ESPN, addressed efforts to extend the deadline into 2024.
Monahan said in his memo, according to the Golf Channel, that the PGA Tour will “continue our active and productive conversations with PIF and the DP World Tour.
“While we had initially set a deadline of December 31, 2023, to reach an agreement, we are working to extend our negotiations into next year based on the progress we have made to date.”
Monahan also said the PGA Tour had made “meaningful progress” in separate negotiations to have Strategic Sports Group (SSG) become a tour minority investor.
Monahan’s memo said the goal remains to have PIF, the DP World Tour and SSG become minority co-investors in PGA Tour Enterprises in 2024.
“These partnerships will allow us to unify, innovate and invest in the game for the benefit of the players, fans and sponsors,” Monahan said.
ESPN reported the SSG would invest $3 billion into the new entity, which would be financed to more than $7 billion if the PIF investment were also included in any deal.
The PGA Tour has been negotiating with PIF since June with a stated December 31 deadline on final details of a merger agreement, the announcement of which stunned PGA Tour players and led to players demanding and getting greater input in final approval of the deal.
Spain’s Jon Rahm, the reigning Masters champion, jumped from the PGA Tour to LIV Golf in early December, serving notice that the Saudi-backed series and its plans for a 2024 campaign could pull even more talent from the PGA Tour as it did in 2022 for its inaugural season.
A PGA TOUR logo is seen after play was suspended due to severe storms during the third round of THE PLAYERS Championship held at THE PLAYERS Stadium course at TPC Sawgrass on May 14, 2011 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
Streeter Lecka | Getty Images
PGA Tour and LIV Golf are working to extend their proposed merger deadline, which was originally set at Dec. 31, Commissioner Jay Monahan told players in a memo on Sunday.
“While we had initially set a deadline of December 31, 2023, to reach an agreement, we are working to extend our negotiations into next year based on the progress we have made to date,” according to the memo obtained by CNBC.
Monahan told players their goal for 2024 is to reach agreements with Strategic Sports Group (SSG), the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and DP World Tour, bringing them on board as minority co-investors in PGA Tour Enterprises.
The PGA Tour recently announced that it was in the final round of negotiations with a coalition of U.S. investors, called Strategic Sports Group. The SSG is led by Fenway Sports Group. Monahan said they have made “meaningful progress” and have provided SSG with the due diligence information they requested.
“These partnerships will allow us to unify, innovate and invest in the game for the benefit of players, fans and sponsors,” he said.
The competing golf leagues are expected to make a formal decision on the combination ahead of the Masters tournament in April, according to The Telegraph, which first reported the extension.
The delay is the latest update in a long and tumultuous saga between the PGA Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund-backed LIV Golf that has divided players and could dramatically change professional golf if the merger is completed.
The two entities agreed in June to combine commercial operations, shocking the global golf community and raising questions around competition and human rights considerations. Under the structure of the agreement, PGA Tour would hold a permanent controlling interest in the new entity’s board of directors and PIF would be a noncontrolling minority investor.
If the proposed merger is completed, PIF is prepared to invest $1 billion into the new commercial business. The agreement also includes the DP World Tour, also known as the PGA European Tour.
The deal is subject to likely antitrust scrutiny from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.
Before the agreement, PGA Tour and LIV were locked in heated litigation as LIV Golf lured Tour players away, offering big contracts. LIV Golf most recently signed world No. 3 player Jon Rahm to a contract worth a reported $300 million.
Last month, the Tour told players it would begin offering direct equity ownership in the new company after it reaches a deal with investors.
In late November, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan told Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit that he was meeting with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chairman of LIV Golf and PIF governor, to continue discussions.
“When this gets finalized, the PGA Tour is going to be in a position where the athletes are owners in their sport and you’ve got not only the PIF, but you’ve likely got another co-investor with significant experience in business, in sport and [in] brand that’s going to help take the PGA Tour to another level,” Monahan said at the time.
Correction: The story has been updated to accurately reflect the name of Jay Monahan, which was misspelled due to an editing error.
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Tiger Woods says he has been encouraged by his performance in two December events, the first competitive golf for the 15-time major winner since April ankle surgery.
Woods, who turns 48 later this month, had not played since the Masters eight months ago before placing 18th of 20 in the Hero World Challenge two weeks ago.
“A lot of things are aching a lot more than my ankle, which is the way it goes,” Woods said. “I’ll be able to walk and play. We’ve been working out hard, been able to recover.”
On Sunday, he and 14-year-old son Charlie Woods combined to shoot 61 and grab a share of fifth at the PNC Championship in Orlando, Florida.
They finished on 19-under 125 in the parent-child pairs event to stand six strokes adrift of German winner Bernhard Langer and his son Jason.
Woods had struggled to walk four rounds after severe leg injuries suffered in a 2021 car crash but has said he plans to compete once a month next year thanks to a strong fitness recovery.
“We’ve been training every day, which is great,” Woods said. “It has been nice to knock off a lot of the rust and some of the doubt I’ve had because quite frankly I haven’t hit a shot that counted in a long time.
“So having to post a score and hit shots on the right number, hit shots with consequence, it has been nice.”
Woods says his surgically repaired right ankle, which once had him limping through rounds at majors, is no longer such an issue.
“The ankle was fine because it’s now fused but other parts were definitely aching,” Woods said. “The fact we were able to train right away and get after it, and start hitting balls, it was encouraging.”
Woods is not exempt for next year’s US Open, but the three-time US Open champion would likely receive an exemption.
“As of right now, no, I’m not in,” Woods said. “Whether or not I have to formally ask them or they invite me or give me an exemption or I have to go qualify, who knows? I don’t know what the process is.”
Woods said his comeback events have boosted his confidence that he can still strike the golf ball competitively with the world’s best.
“If I’m able to practice and do the things I know I can do, and prepare, I know I can still do it,” Woods said.
“I can still hit the golf ball. It’s just a matter of prepping and get enough reps in and get enough work in and being right physically, and endurance capability of it.
“I haven’t had the leg good enough where I’ve been able to compete and play a lot of rounds.”
LIV Golf chief executive Greg Norman says that Jon Rahm’s move to the Saudi-backed circuit will “create a domino effect” of more high-profile players making the lucrative jump.
Reigning Masters champion Rahm last week joined LIV in a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars in a huge coup for the upstart tour.
LIV had already recruited major winners Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith, but Rahm was arguably the biggest name yet to leave the PGA Tour.
Speaking from Saudi Arabia to the BBC’s World Business Report, the Australian Norman — the public face of LIV — said there would be “more apples falling from the tree”.
“To have Jon on board is critically important to our next steps into the future and what we want to do,” Norman said.
He added: “It will create a domino effect, there will be more apples falling from the tree, there’s no question about it because LIV continues to grow and develop.”
Spain’s Rahm had previously ruled out going to LIV, which held its inaugural season in 2022 and triggered a civil war in golf.
He is reportedly set to earn between $300 million and $600 million.
“Since Jon signed, less than a week ago now, I know my phone is blowing up,” Norman added.
“I know we probably have eight to 12 players who are very, very keen to sit down and talk to us about coming on board.”
Saudi Arabia’s foray into sport has triggered accusations that it is “sportswashing” its human rights record.
Norman, a two-time major winner, said that Saudi Arabia “really cares” about golf.
“If you see the way they’re embracing the game of golf, they’re investing in the game of golf in their country for their people into the future,” he said.
Rahm’s move came as the PGA Tour and the Saudi backers of LIV attempt to finalise the details of their bombshell merger announced in June.
A deadline of December 31 has been set to agree a framework for the new PGA-LIV joint venture.