Latest news with #GolfClub
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Scottie Scheffler wins 2025 PGA Championship
Scottie Scheffler wins the 2025 PGA Championship at the Quail Hollow Golf Club in Charlotte, N.C., on Sunday. Scheffler, who entered the day with a 3-stroke lead on the field, carded a final round of even par to finish at 11-under and claim his third career major crown.
USA Today
06-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Meet the woman behind Hobe Sound's tough course conditioning at the U.S. Senior Challenge
Julie Williams Special to Golfweek Jackie Byler puts a lot of stock in the quality of a golf course's greens. They have been her primary focus these past two years as superintendent of Hobe Sound (Florida) Golf Club, a private facility with a small membership that sits amid some of South Florida's most prominent courses – Medalist and McArthur to the north, Jupiter Island Club to the east. This is something that Byler, 38, picked up from Dick Gray, the former head greenskeeper at PGA Golf Club in St. Lucie, Florida, who became an important mentor for her as she navigated her way to the superintendent position at Hobe Sound. 'When I first started, my biggest focus was the greens and just kind of start getting my program figured out on what products I wanted to use and the timing of all of it,' Byler said, 'and I felt like just with my experience working with Dick Gray, he was kind of always known for his greens also. 'Kind of sticking with the program that was very similar but knowing that the greens are the most important anywhere and that if you have good greens, that's the thing – sometimes you'll have a little bit more forgiveness in other areas. But the greens are the things that make or break people's careers.' Hobe Sound doesn't often open its doors to outside events, but the course welcomed 26 four-man teams of senior amateurs – including several nationally ranked players – on April 28-30 for the U.S. Senior Challenge. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle 'Our interest with this was we just felt that bringing some of the best senior amateurs to the club and putting our course to the test was something that was very interesting to us,' Hobe Sound general manager Jason Hayes said before the tournament. And truly, it was a test. Players raved about course conditioning on a challenging layout that never offered a break. Having come from PGA Golf Club, Byler knows something about putting a course in tournament condition. Byler is a former field hockey player who graduated high school in 2005 knowing she wanted a job outdoors. She attended Penn State for the turfgrass science program and stepped into the golf industry by way of a pair of back-to-back internships at Disney's golf facility. 'That's when I realized being in Florida during the winter is a lot better than Pennsylvania,' said Byler, a Pennsylvania native. 'So that's where learning to work with the warmer season grasses started.' Byler transitioned to PGA Golf Club at the beginning of 2012 as a second assistant/irrigation tech. Over the course of 11 years, she worked her way up the ladder. As a kid, Byler loved helping her mom with the flower beds every spring and summer – picking out plant material, putting down mulch and generally spending time outside. She dabbled in golf with her father, Jeff Byler, from the time she was 11 years old. First she would just hit a shot or two, then she'd drop a ball by the green and play in and eventually, she could put together a full round. The combination drew her to a career in golf, even though she very nearly bailed on that idea after a foray into athletic field maintenance that began with a quest for Penn State football season tickets. After missing the online ticket sales window because she was working at the university's Valentine Turf Research Center, she decided to approach some of the stadium grounds crew while working in a shared wash area for equipment. 'If you guys need somebody for the fall to work on staff, let me know,' she told them. That led to a grounds crew job in which Byler pitched in on jobs like maintaining the perimeter of the stadium, the parking areas and the intramural fields. 'That was a great trade-off because then doing that, yes we had to do some work early in the morning on game days but we got paid to sit on the sideline and watch the games,' she said. 'For awhile, I thought I wanted to get into athletics because I really enjoyed that side of things and really enjoyed college football.' Alas, golf won out. Throughout her time at Penn State, Byler, as a woman in turfgrass science, was in the minority. Often, her classes would include 30 to 50 students, and she'd be the only female. As her career progressed, she sometimes felt brushed to the side or like people would discount what she was saying simply because she was female. Just as often, though, people were welcoming and gender wasn't a factor. Word of Byler's skillset traveled, and ultimately, it's what afforded her the chance to take the next step from PGA Golf Club in 2023. When the Hobe Sound job came open, Byler's name seemed to be coming up over and over again to the course's greens chair. Byler got a call one Saturday that he'd like to meet with her and when that went well, Byler found herself driving the golf course two days later with the outgoing superintendent. By Thursday, she had a job offer. 'I didn't necessarily know if I would ever have a chance to work at a private club,' said Byler, who is eager to continue building up Hobe Sound. She's making the most of the one that came her way.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How a ‘Reality Check' Helped GloRilla Get Her Groove Back — And Conquer Hip-Hop
Memphis-bred rap star GloRilla knows a thing or two about staging a comeback. In 2022, she exploded into the mainstream with the Grammy Award-nominated, summer-dominating 'F.N.F.' — and quickly followed it up with the Cardi B-assisted 'Tomorrow 2,' which peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became her first top 10 hit on the chart. More from Billboard How Doechii's Singular Vision Powered Her Stunning Rise (And A Grammy Win) Jon Stewart, Bowen Yang & More Are Nominated for 2025 Ambies, Presented by the Podcast Academy Watch Celine Dion Rip a Killer Tee Shot and Play Golf Club Air Guitar On Outing With Sons: 'Getting Back into the Swing of Things!!' But 2023 proved to be a far cry from her triumphant rookie year. She kicked it off with the Moneybagg Yo collaboration 'On What U On,' which stalled at No. 56 on the Hot 100 — and was her only release that year to even reach the chart. Everything she dropped bricked, whether it was the radio-ready 'Lick or Sum' or her direct response to detractors, 'Internet Trolls.' And that March, tragedy struck when three people died in a fatal crowd surge at her concert with Finesse2tymes in Rochester, N.Y. With her commercial pull waning, everyone on the internet (trolls and otherwise) seemed to agree: Big Glo had fallen off. '2023 was an eye-opener for me,' the 25-year-old says. 'I realized that I can't take my foot off the gas. I didn't know I was doing that, but I did. It was a reality check when I would drop music and people would hate it. Getting closer to God was one of the key things that helped me.' Born Gloria Hallelujah Woods, the eighth of 10 children, GloRilla grew up in the church. She sang in the choir and her mother only allowed gospel music in the house; as her taste evolved and she found a home in hip-hop, gospel music and its encouraging messages remained present in her raps — from 2022's 'Blessed' to 'Rain Down on Me,' a gospel-rap track from Glorious, her 2024 debut studio album. GloRilla also looked to Yo Gotti, the rap superstar and fellow Memphian who's now her label head, as a mentor. Since Gotti signed Glo to his CMG Records imprint in 2022, the two have worked closely to hone her sound and image, taking her from viral breakout to presidential campaign surrogate (she performed at a Wisconsin rally for former Vice President Kamala Harris last fall). 'Even with all the success and accolades, she's still the same authentic and ambitious hustler that I met back in 2022,' Gotti says of Glo. With the help of her CMG team, renowned choreographer Sean Bankhead and creative director Coco Gilbert, GloRilla spent late 2023 plotting the perfect road map to recapture her momentum. The plan worked: With her first release of 2024, the anthemic 'Yeah Glo!,' GloRilla came out swinging. Arriving in February, the motivational anthem took over nightclubs, cookouts and locker room celebrations. The song topped Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay for two weeks and reached No. 28 on the Hot 100, then her highest peak for a solo single. 'To have that little break, come back with 'Yeah Glo!' and have it start going up on the first day [of release] — that was personal,' GloRilla tells Billboard in between rehearsals for her forthcoming Glorious tour. 'Yeah Glo!' was meant to introduce GloRilla's debut album, but its runaway success significantly shifted those plans. 'I felt like I had to build my momentum back, so that's where the mixtape kicked in,' she explains. 'We made that decision around the time 'Yeah Glo!' came out.' Ehhthang Ehhthang arrived in April and yielded another hit single, the Megan Thee Stallion-assisted 'Wanna Be,' which later received a Cardi B remix and peaked at No. 11 on the Hot 100. The week before, Megan had announced Glo as the special guest for her arena-conquering Hot Girl Summer Tour. Between Ehhthang Ehhthang and successful guest appearances on BossMan Dlow's 'Finesse' and Big Boogie's 'Bop,' GloRilla had become inescapable — and she hadn't even launched her official album campaign yet. While opening the Hot Girl Summer Tour in June, GloRilla released 'TGIF,' which kicked her 2024 into an even higher gear. Within a week of the song's release, Rihanna shared an instantly viral clip of herself adorably dancing and singing along to it. By February 2025, GloRilla became the first artist to simultaneously become a face of all four of Rihanna's Fenty brands. With Riri begging for an album in her DMs and Beyoncé posting pictures with her on Instagram, GloRilla had undoubtedly became the hottest woman MC in the game. As 'TGIF' cemented her pop appeal, GloRilla kept her core audience fed — and reinforced her sound — with her feature on Real Boston Richey's 'Get in There.' 'Me and my team figured out the difference between a mixtape and album song: You just got to hear it,' she says. 'My core sound is how [gritty] the mixtape sounded. When I went into album mode, I already had a lot of those songs before the mixtape — but I knew they weren't mixtape songs.' After months of recapturing and multiplying her momentum, GloRilla finally released Glorious in October. With collaborators ranging from Sexyy Red to Maverick City Music, Glo's studio debut was a capstone on her massive year, earning the highest opening week total for an album by a female rapper in 2024 (69,000 units) for a No. 5 debut on the Billboard 200. Five of its songs landed on the Hot 100, including 'Whatchu Kno About Me' (No. 17), which Taylor Swift later used to soundtrack an Eras Tour TikTok. 'I was real excited about that,' Glo recalls. 'Everybody was sending it to me — I was feeling like 'that girl' when she posted that.' Now, after scoring three Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay No. 1 hits in under a year and being named Billboard's Hottest Female Rapper of 2024, Billboard's 2025 Women in Music Powerhouse is determined to deliver an impeccable show on her tour, which commenced March 5 in Oklahoma City and will play arenas and music halls throughout the United States. 'Even though I'm not as good at dancing, I'm getting better and I learn fast,' she says, noting that her tour prep playlist includes gospel classics like Yolanda Adams' 'Open My Heart.' 'I learn about two new routines a day. I like helping out with choreography because I get to do what I'm comfortable with and showcase my vision.' Still, GloRilla isn't as concerned with being the best rapper alive as she is with her own consistent personal growth. 'I have the desire to be the best me I can be,' she proclaims. This story appears in the March 22, 2025, issue of Billboard. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
