Latest news with #DannyWillett
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Impressive List in Final Qualifying for 155th Open
Impressive List in Final Qualifying for 155th Open originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The R&A announced the final qualifying draw for the 153rd Open Championship on Tuesday, and it is filled with names you would recognize. Advertisement Just going through the list, there are major champions in Graeme McDowell and Danny Willett. There's also former world No. 1 Lee Westwood of England, along with numerous PGA and DP World Tour winners. A couple of years ago, I attended the Final Qualifying at West Lancashire and was treated to a fun-filled day with a much bigger gallery and many big-name players, including Sergio Garcia, Matt Wallace, Alex Fitzpatrick and McDowell. It had the enjoyment factor of attending a U.S. Amateur or Walker Cup with no ropes of any consequence and players digging deep to play 36 holes to qualify for The Open. Advertisement It was a coming-out party for Fitzpatrick, who played at Wake Forest and was part of the GB&I Walker team. Alex Fitzpatrick plays his shot from the first tee during the final round of The Open Championship golf tournament in 2023. Kyle Terada-Imagn Images He is also the little brother of U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open Champion Matt Fitzpatrick, a point of pride at times and consternation at other times. On that July 4 in 2023, Fitzpatrick shot 70-65 to finish 9-under and qualify for his first major championship at Hoylake. He was giddy. 'I feel like I've worked pretty hard for a long time and haven't felt like I've got a lot out of the work I've put in,' Fitzpatrick said back in 2023 of his game and how he struggled to find success. 'Today was just a lot of patience, and I managed to stay calm, and even after a few bogeys and stuff, just kind of kept myself in it.' Advertisement Fitzpatrick was familiar with Hoylake from playing in the Walker Cup for Great Britain and Ireland in 2019, but he could never imagine how his four days in his first Open would go. The younger Fitzpatrick shot a 65 in the third round and found himself on the leaderboard and in contention in a major. Ultimately, Fitzpatrick would finish T17 at Royal Liverpool and left the Southport coast with a bit of skip to his step. He would win weeks later on the Hotel Planner Tour at the British Challenge and two tournaments later finish runner-up at the ISPS Handa World Invitational on the DP World Tour. Then came a T5 at the Omega European Masters and eventually his DP World Tour card. All of this came out of a good final qualifying at West Lancashire. Advertisement 'We were saying, me and my caddie, it's like, 7:30 this morning, there was about 2,000 people in the rain and the cold,' Fitzpatrick said recalling the early-morning start. 'So, I couldn't believe the support. I had a massive group follow me, which was amazing.' Below is a list of some of the players' names in next week's final qualifying. The Open Championship will be held July 17-20 at Royal Portrush. Caleb Surratt Matthew Southgate (England) Anirban Lahari (India) Harry Hall (England) Luke Poulter (England) Rafa Cabrera Bello (Spain) Erik van Rooyen (South Africa) Graeme McDowell (NRI) Ian Poulter (England) Advertisement Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen (Denmark) Tom Lewis (England) Alex Fitzpatrick (England) Jamie Donaldson (Wales) Lee Westwood (England) Lucas Herbert (Australia) Sam Horsfield (England) Doc Redman David Puig (Spain) Abraham Ancer (Mexico) Chris Wood (England) Eddie Pepperell (England) Kevon Chappell Dean Burmester (South Africa) Peter Uihlein Adrian Meronk (Poland) Alex Noren (Sweden) Danny Willett (England) Harold Varner III Branden Grace (South Africa) Paul Casey (England) Oliver Wilson (England) Related: Record Attendance Expected at 2025 Open Championship Related: Is Carnoustie Worthy of Another Open Championship? This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 24, 2025, where it first appeared.
USA Today
12 hours ago
- Sport
- USA Today
Danny Willett: Rocket Mortgage Classic betting odds and preview
Danny Willett finished 13th in his last tournament in the RBC Canadian Open at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley from June 5-8, and will look to improve on that finish in the 2025 Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club. He has +20000 odds to win. Willett has competed in 13 events in the last 12 months. His best finish was ninth, his average finish was 34th, and he made the cut seven times (53.8%). The field will head to Detroit, MI from June 26-29 for this event, which was last won by Cam Davis. The prize pool of $9,600,000.00 will be shared among the qualified golfers taking to the 7,370-yard, par 72 course this week. Danny Willett odds to win the Rocket Mortgage Classic PGA odds courtesy of BetMGM Sportsbook. Odds updated Tuesday at 1:25 PM ET. For a full list of sports betting odds, access USA TODAY Sports Betting Scores Odds Hub. Willett's stats and trends Willett's recent results How to watch the Rocket Mortgage Classic ESPN+ is the new home of PGA TOUR LIVE. Sign up now to access 4,300+ hours of live coverage from 35 PGA TOUR tournaments this year.
USA Today
17-04-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Danny Willett odds to win the 2025 Corales Puntacana Championship
Danny Willett will be among the players hitting the links at Puntacana Resort & Club (Corales Golf Course) from April 17-20 for the Corales Puntacana Championship.
Washington Post
11-04-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
At the Masters, a day without phones is a journey back in time
AUGUSTA, Ga. — It was quiet and crisp as 8 a.m. arrived on the practice range Thursday at Augusta National Golf Club. Cam Smith, an Australian with hopes of winning the Masters one day, cracked long irons into the sky, his tee time 52 minutes away. Danny Willett, an Englishman who won this tournament in 2016, lobbed wedges high into the air 20-some minutes before he began another pursuit. Otherwise, there wasn't much going on. For the golf fans who filled into the seats behind the range — making sure a nice attendant wiped away the dew with a towel first — it was a perfect time to text a friend or check the headlines. The Masters wasn't truly underway yet, so … grab your phone and see what's going in the world. Except — and of course — there are no cellphones allowed at Augusta National. At 8:17 a.m., I had my first pang of anxiety: What if someone was trying to reach me! At every other golf tournament during the year — including the other three majors — fans can bring their phones as long as they're on silent mode. I have covered enough Masters that I'm familiar with the drill at Augusta: When you're watching golf here, you relinquish contact with the outside world. That's fine and even refreshing. Reporters are allowed to bring our phones to the press building and use them as we see fit there. So if we spend a morning on the course, then return to our desks around lunchtime, we can check emails, make calls, shoot off some texts. On Thursday, I committed to something different: a full day without my phone. How quintessentially Augusta. 'Just because of the fact that the patrons don't have their phones out, it actually makes it feel like they're so much more engaged,' said Ludvig Aberg, a Swede who is among the top players in the world. 'It's a lot more eye contact with the fans. You can really tell that they watch and appreciate good golf.' The bold decision to spend a day without a phone shouldn't be a joke. A company called Harmony Healthcare IT conducted a survey this year of more than 1,000 Americans. The findings: The average daily cellphone use in this country is 5 hours 16 minutes. If you're awake for, say, 16 hours, that's approaching a third of your time. Such a fixation has real consequences. Four years ago, the Journal of Mental Health and Clinical Psychology published a paper that concluded cellphone usage resulted in five symptoms of addiction: disregarding negative consequences, preoccupation, an inability to control behavior, productivity loss and feeling lost, and anxiousness. 'The lonelier someone felt,' the authors wrote, 'the more likely they were addicted to their smartphone.' So maybe a day at Augusta National could help us be a better version of ourselves. Put aside those weighty issues for a minute. Turns out spending a day disconnected requires some planning. First off, are you meeting anyone at the Masters? You better establish a specific time and a specific place the night before or the morning of. There's no texting for quick adjustments. If someone's running late or got caught in traffic, you have to wait them out. Secondly, being without your own phone doesn't mean you can't call someone from the Masters. Augusta National has no fewer than eight banks of landline phones scattered around the grounds, free for public use. Call anyone you like in any country around the world. What do you need to do that? A finger — and the phone numbers. Write down their phone numbers. These banks of landlines don't come equipped with your contact list. So at 7:45 a.m., I headed out with a sheet showing the tee times, a notebook and pen and the official Masters spectator guide. I hit the range, where I watched warmups and met a friend. Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion, and Justin Thomas, a potential contender, teed off at 10:15 a.m. So after grabbing a breakfast sandwich and an iced tea (total cost: $5.34), I headed to the area between the first tee and the 18th green. As I waited alone, I looked up — and saw a longtime friend. David is the kind of person you run into at Augusta. An executive at a video game company (maybe even the one that makes the PGA Tour game), he had texted during the week that he would be here Thursday and Friday. He had a group he had to tend to, so we didn't schedule a time to meet up — and we did anyway. 'We should take a selfie,' he joked when we were finishing up. No phones. No selfies. At that point, the tournament was just getting rolling. There's no checking for Masters updates on your phone, but there are leader boards — all hand-operated — throughout the course. At that point, the big board displayed the following: Couples 1 1 1 Kirk 0 1 1 2 2 2 Rai 0 1 2 2 Johnson Z 0 1 2 2 2 2 2 Kent 0 0 1 2 2 Anyone who attends the Masters has to get used to reading those scores. The numbers other than zero were all in red, indicating the number of strokes that player was under par. (Even-par and over-par scores are in green.) So in deciphering: Fred Couples birdied the first and was 1 under through three; Chris Kirk birdied 2 and 4 and was 2 under through 6. Etc. By the time I stood behind the fourth tee with Scheffler's group, he was 1 under. A huge roar came up from down the hill behind us. The crowd's roars define this place. Come here long enough, and you get a good idea of where a roar begins and what it means. This was clear: eagle at No. 2. But who? And how? No way to know. I didn't know it had been Maverick McNealy chipping in from across the green for a 3 until I looked it up at 5:45 p.m. The information you can gain while on the Augusta grounds isn't about tariffs or the markets. It's about the tournament, and it's sparse. There are information boards that show only tee times for the field, with an asterisk after each group that made the turn. The only scoreboard that displays the entire 95-player field is to the right of the first fairway, at the bottom of a hill down from the clubhouse. What you get are conversations that are very much in the present. And observations. So many observations. ('Scottie looks lankier in person.' 'No. 12 is so tiny.' 'That was a pretty poor shot.') As I headed back to the press building (full disclosure: deadline meant I needed to be writing by 3:30 p.m.), I passed a scoreboard at 17 that showed Justin Rose with a red 5 after his ninth hole, the leader. I got to my phone at 3:14 p.m.: 11 texts, 54 emails and one Slack message. Man, it was nice to miss them. Oh, one other thing: Near the sixth green sat a set of tablets under a sign that said, 'Patron Survey.' I filled one out, mostly to get to the last, open-ended question, a spot where you could write whatever you wanted. My response: 'Please don't change the cellphone policy.'
USA Today
09-04-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
3 sleepers to win the 2025 Masters (including Akshay Bhatia!)
3 sleepers to win the 2025 Masters (including Akshay Bhatia!) Finding sleeper picks for the Masters Tournament has always been a bit of a fool's errand. More often than not, it's a superstar who slips on the green jacket on Sunday. The last five champions are Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama, Dustin Johnson and Tiger Woods. They don't call this event The Amateurs. Not since Charl Schwartzel in 2011 has there been a winner who had odds longer than 100-1. Even Danny Willett was only 50-1 when he miraculously won in 2015. So consider this a list of players who can win if all the top contenders get caught in another Thanos snap situation. That said, crazier things have happened in golf. Look no further than Danny Willett. Let's dig into the three sleepers for the year's first major. All odds via BetMGM Akshay Bhatia (66-1) Akshay Bhatia is a superstar in the making, so starting off with the 23-year-old makes too much sense. He finished T35 last year in his Masters debut. That's not bad at all given a debutant hasn't won a green jacket since 1979. Bhatia's True Strokes Gained was a respectable +0.84 over his four rounds and he's steadily improved in the year since. This season Bhatia has Top 10 finishes at the Genesis Invitational (T9), Mexico Open (9th) and The Players (T3). If you don't feel comfortable betting on him outright, a Top 10 finish seems reasonably priced at 4-1. J.J. Spaun (100-1) When we last saw Spaun on a stage like this, he was getting bullied by the No. 17 island green at TPC Sawgrass in a playoff against Rory McIlroy. Since then he's had a missed cut at the Houston Open, but that was likely just prep for this week. Spaun ranks 16th on tour in Strokes Gained: Total (+1.180), second in SG: Approach to Green (+1.092) and seventh in Green In Regulation percentage (71.43). If his putter is dialed in — a big if, to be sure — he'll find himself near the top of the leaderboard again, improving on his T23 finish in 2022. Cameron Young (125-1) As far as the long-shot odds go, you could do much worse than 125-1 on someone who finished T7 and T9 in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Young has played 10 rounds at Augusta National and has a True Strokes Gained of +1.65. On the other hand, Young missed the cut this year at The American Express, Genesis Invitational, Cognizant Classic, Arnold Palmer Invitational and Valspar Championship. His best finish was T12 at the Phoenix Open. It would be a massive, massive shock if someone with odds this long triumphed over a field this stacked. Best of luck to those who tail (or fade)!
