Indo Sport podcast: Bits & Bobs FomOasis hits hard Scottie & Rory face off
Plus – Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy gear up for a duel in the Tour Championship.
If you'd like to get in touch with the show, email us at indosportpodcast@independent.ie ✉️
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Irish Examiner
37 minutes ago
- Irish Examiner
'I like him. I like him a lot' - Rory McIlroy excited as new PGA Tour CEO gets to work
The baton was officially passed on Wednesday, with outgoing PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan introducing incoming PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp to field questions in the traditional end-of-season, state-of-the-PGA Tour press conference ahead of the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club. Rolapp wasted no time in showing that the new boss is welcome to new ideas. His first official act as chief was to announce the formation a nine-member Future Competition Committee to be chaired by Tiger Woods and populated by a range of stakeholders in the game. 'The purpose of this committee is pretty simple – we're going to design the best professional golf competitive model in the world for the benefit of PGA Tour fans, players and their partners,' Rolapp said. 'It is aimed at a holistic relook of how we compete on the tour. That is inclusive of regular season, postseason and off-season. "We're going to focus on the evolution of our competitive model and the corresponding media products and sponsorship elements and model of the entire sport. The goal is not incremental change. The goal is significant change.' The committee will be made up of six players – Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchell – and three business advisors: Joe Gorder, the chairman of the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Enterprises boards; John Henry, manager of tour investor Strategic Sports Group; and Theo Epstein, former Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs general manager and senior advisor to Fenway Sports Group. The PGA Tour already announced its 2026 schedule on Tuesday, but that doesn't mean Rolapp isn't willing to make changes before the 2027 season. 'I don't think I'm going to commit to a specific time,' Rolapp said. 'I think the right answer to that is we will take as much time is to get it right, at least the initial time out, but we're going to aggressively move. "I would like to put in the right competitive model as soon as we can, but we want to do it right. So however long it takes, we'll do, while moving aggressively.' Rolapp – who comes to golf via being second man on the totem pole in the NFL, the most popular sports league in America – said he's given the committee three 'guiding principles' to strive for in its recommendations. 'These principles are key characteristics of what I think will be a successful competitive model going forward,' Rolapp said. 'The first one of those characteristics is competitive parity. All sports, all sports chase competitive parity. The PGA Tour has incredible competitive parity and balance among its players today. We're going to lean into this while also maintaining another key characteristic of the PGA Tour, meritocracy.... 'The second key characteristic is scarcity. A focus on the tour's top players to compete together more often in events that feel special for fans and feel special for the players. 'Finally, the third principle will be simplicity. Competition should be easy to follow. The regular season and postseason should be connected in a way that builds towards a Tour Championship in a way that all sports fans can understand.' On the job for only three weeks, Rolapp is still getting up to speed with all of the tour's shareholders. Rory McIlroy is one of the 20 or so players Rolapp has sat down with to get to know during his whirlwind on-boarding process, and the reigning Masters champ came away impressed. 'I hadn't met him up until last week, and I was able to spend a good 90 minutes with him just talking through everything to do with the tour and the whole thing over the past three or four years and what the future looks like,' McIlroy said. 'I like him. I like him a lot. I like that he doesn't come from golf. I like that he doesn't have any preconceived ideas of what golf should look like or what the tour should look like. I think he's going to bring a fresh perspective to everything, and I think he wants to move pretty quick, so I'm excited.'
Irish Daily Mirror
37 minutes ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Tommy Bowe questions woman's decision to bring child to tennis match
Tommy Bowe has questioned the decision of a parent to bring their child to a tennis match after the child in question disrupted the players by crying. Partway through the match between Emma Raducanu and Aryna Sabalenka at the Cincinnati Open, Raducanu complained about the crying child 'for ten minutes' to the chair umpire, who replied in seemingly disbelief by asking whether Raducanu wanted the child to be removed, to which Raducanu and some of the crowd responded in the affirmative. The British tennis star has come in for some criticism from some quarters for her remarks and attitude to the crying child, but she has a supporter in ex-Ireland rugby star Tommy Bowe who also believes the child shouldn't have been brought to the event. Emma Raducanu (Image: ISI Photos via Getty Images) Appearing on Ireland AM, the topic of Raducanu's comments came up, with Bowe being asked what he as a father of two would have done in the situation. Bowe told actor Gerard Jordan, who was appearing on the show, that he wouldn't have brought his children to such an event, and in an imagined scenario where a babysitter fell through at the last minute, the ex-rugby star claimed that in that situation he would have simply stayed at home with the children. "As a parent, I would know that it would be too stressful for me to take my child in there to be put in that situation. So I'd decide, no, I don't think it's worth upsetting the other people who are watching it and me being put under the stress of doing it. I'll watch it on the telly," said Bowe. Tommy Bowe Like Raducanu, Bowe has come in for some criticism for his comments, with one social media user saying "Disappointed in these comments. No compassion for that mom. Gerard Jordan is just trying to inspire people to put themselves in someone else's shoes for two seconds but y'all can't even do that." Others have defended Bowe, and have suggested that in a sporting event like tennis where the crowd remains mostly silent, perhaps a young child isn't suited to such an environment. As for the match itself, Sabalenka won in three sets as she continues to build momentum ahead of next month's US Open, where Raducanu will team with Carlos Alcaraz in mixed doubles action.
RTÉ News
an hour ago
- RTÉ News
Tiger Woods' intensity fuelled Scottie Scheffler's consistency
World number one Scottie Scheffler credits Tiger Woods for inspiring the crucial change to his game which has made him arguably the best golfer since the 15-time major winner's pomp. Scheffler won the US PGA and Open Championship this year, with three of his four majors coming in the last eight events, and also has three other PGA Tour victories in 2025. He is the last player since Woods to win five tournaments in back-to-back seasons and while he continues to play down comparisons, he does admit the influence of golf's modern great sparked a turning point in his own career. "Tiger was just different, in the sense of the way he approached each shot, it was like the last shot he was ever going to hit," said Scheffler, who is attempting to become the first player to successfully defend a FedEx Cup title in the season-ending Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta. "I've only played with Tiger once in a tournament, in the 2020 Masters and I think he made a 10 on the 12th hole and then he birdied, I think, five of the last six. "It was like 'What's this guy still playing for? He's won the Masters five times. Best finish he's going to have is like 20th place at this point'. "I just admired the intensity that he brought to each round. That was something that I just thought about for a long time. "I felt like a change I needed to make was bringing that same intensity to each round and each shot. "I don't hit the ball the furthest, the things that I do on the golf course other people can do, so I think it's just the amount of consistency and the intensity that I bring to each round of golf – not taking shots off, not taking rounds off, not taking tournaments off. "When I show up at a tournament, I'm here for a purpose and that's to compete hard and you compete hard on every shot." Those are ominous words from a player who is currently top of the FedEx standings, with almost twice as many points as second-placed Rory McIlroy. However, unlike previous years, when there were shots advantages to be earned from your place in the 30-man standings, every player now starts level par and the winner over four rounds wins not only the Tour Championship but the FedEx Cup and a $10m bonus. "I'm maybe part of the minority. I didn't hate the starting strokes," said McIlroy. "I thought that the player that played the best during the course of the season should have had an advantage coming in here but the majority of people just didn't like the starting strokes. "But you could also argue if it was starting strokes this week, Scottie, with a two-shot lead, probably isn't enough considering what he's done this year and the lead that he has in the FedExCup going into this week."
