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Belfast Telegraph
5 days ago
- Sport
- Belfast Telegraph
Tom McKibbin vents his frustration after missing first Major cut of his career
'Not great. A little bit annoyed. Yeah, a little bit p****d off,' he opined bluntly after firing a two-over second-round 73 to finish the week at three-over-par, two shots too many for the cut line. You could hardly blame him, given he started the day so positively with a birdie at the first, but a double-bogey at the eighth after finding trouble over the green and two more bogeys at the par-fours 11 and 14 were enough to do the damage. He reinvigorated his hopes of making the weekend with a birdie at the 15th to get back to three-over, with the cut at that point threatening to move to two-over, but three pars to finish just wasn't good enough. 'The whole week was good, sort of positive,' he continued. 'I thought I played all right, just a few sort of stupid mistakes that, looking back, I wouldn't really hit different. 'The shot was fine, just sort of missed in the wrong spot or got the club slightly wrong. 'Overall, I actually thought I played quite nicely, just a few silly mistakes.' The Open at Royal Portrush: What happened in 2019 It is another crucial bit of Major experience for the 22-year-old, who has four more events on the LIV Tour to play in before he finishes his season with some DP World Tour invites, even if this was the first he has played where it only lasted for two rounds. He will take plenty of confidence from a strong showing on the greens, where he ranked fourth in strokes gained putting, and how he battled through some punishing weather but, ultimately, it wasn't enough to get him in for the weekend. 'I think that's what's probably most annoying. This is probably the best I've played out of them all,' McKibbin fumed. 'Just so many like stupid errors, just pins at the back of the green, hitting over the green. It's just where there's nothing really wrong with the shot. So, I think that's what's a little bit frustrating.' Meanwhile, if this was Darren Clarke's final appearance at a Major, then it was a great one to go out on, and he gave himself a chance of making the cut even if he did end up missing the number by a considerable distance. The 56-year-old looked visibly emotional as he walked up towards the 18th grandstand to round out a second consecutive three-over 74 to end the week at six-over, but he will not forget holing a 56-footer for birdie on the 10th that fostered hope that he might do something special. In the end, though, five bogeys sunk him, including at the 13th and 18th after the birdie at 10, and it's a missed cut for the Dungannon man. Time will tell, but it could very well be his last in this hallowed event.
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Sport
- Sydney Morning Herald
Greg Norman was right, the World Golf Rankings mean nothing
In the three years since the first ball was struck in a LIV tournament, professional golf has become ever so slightly ludicrous. Two years ago, on these pages, I asked what happens to the sixty-odd players who'd signed for the LIV Tour, two years down the track, if whatever they achieve in the meantime counts for zilch? Because the OWGR are based entirely on ranked performances across the previous 24 months. Midway through 2025, my question can be answered: golf's world rankings system is an abject absurdity. Sure, hitching onto LIV Golf's travelling circus has done nada for the cultivation and maintenance of the technical skills and temperament required to compete at the highest level, for either Rahm or Smith, but that's a different argument. The crux of the issue is that LIV events are excluded from the OWGR. That's an unacceptable reality that should rightly cause offence to all professional players– it isn't just the LIV players this freezer treatment directly affects. LIV Golf management this week made a fresh application to the powers who control the OWGR for LIV events to be included in the calculation of world golf rankings. The OWGR meets annually at the British Open. LIV's previous application to OWGR was formally withdrawn last year. There's an indivisible absurdity here. Players began defecting to LIV three years ago. There's been a series of LIV tournaments played and won. Hardly anyone truly pays attention, but regardless, it's wrong that those tournaments, and their entrants' results, are ignored for the purpose of measuring the performance of the thousands of players on the OWGR rankings list. That's not right. There's at least two fundamental problems with the intransigence of those in charge of the OWGR (including PGA Tour and European Tour representatives), regarding LIV players and their achievements in LIV tournaments. Three years ago, the exclusion could be explained on the basis that assessments needed to be made as to what LIV is. Now the exclusion is churlish. LIV events are contrived, with their 54-hole, no cut, limited-field formats and confected atmosphere. It's a closed shop in terms of the players who compete. But by equal measure, results achieved in LIV tournaments must count for something. For players currently ranked inside the top 10 or top 50 of the OWGR, that ranking no longer means what it says because players like Rahm have their regular-season results excluded from all consideration. The best aren't the best any more. The last open door for LIV players outside the top 50 is via open qualifying events for the US Open and The Open championships. In the future, it means major championships will exclude players who should rightfully be there. What then happens, the major tournaments will have their importance eroded. The passage for LIV players to play in The Open wasn't non-existent, but the path was so narrow it may as well be. It's a matter of high farce that LIV-aligned players can't earn world golf rankings points. That's not to say that a 54-hole LIV closed-shop event should be ranked on par with a PGA Tour event that has a field four times as deep. LIV is anything but cutthroat. It's not the best of anything. Loading Yet, the 54-hole Big Easy Tour – a development tour in South Africa, composed largely of golfing unknowns – is recognised for OWGR purposes. Examined through the same prism, it's inexplicable that the LIV Tour isn't. That contrived anomaly must be rectified; otherwise, professional golf and its major tournaments will continue to suffer credibility damage. By the status quo, Rahm might well be ranked outside the world's top 300 next year. Reckon that's accurate? The problem is that the highest-ranking officials from the PGA Tour and DP World Tour sit among those who decide which tournaments and tours are recognised for rankings purposes. Fair and reasonable? Or exclusionary and anti-competitive?
The Age
6 days ago
- Sport
- The Age
Greg Norman was right, the World Golf Rankings mean nothing
In the three years since the first ball was struck in a LIV tournament, professional golf has become ever so slightly ludicrous. Two years ago, on these pages, I asked what happens to the sixty-odd players who'd signed for the LIV Tour, two years down the track, if whatever they achieve in the meantime counts for zilch? Because the OWGR are based entirely on ranked performances across the previous 24 months. Midway through 2025, my question can be answered: golf's world rankings system is an abject absurdity. Sure, hitching onto LIV Golf's travelling circus has done nada for the cultivation and maintenance of the technical skills and temperament required to compete at the highest level, for either Rahm or Smith, but that's a different argument. The crux of the issue is that LIV events are excluded from the OWGR. That's an unacceptable reality that should rightly cause offence to all professional players– it isn't just the LIV players this freezer treatment directly affects. LIV Golf management this week made a fresh application to the powers who control the OWGR for LIV events to be included in the calculation of world golf rankings. The OWGR meets annually at the British Open. LIV's previous application to OWGR was formally withdrawn last year. There's an indivisible absurdity here. Players began defecting to LIV three years ago. There's been a series of LIV tournaments played and won. Hardly anyone truly pays attention, but regardless, it's wrong that those tournaments, and their entrants' results, are ignored for the purpose of measuring the performance of the thousands of players on the OWGR rankings list. That's not right. There's at least two fundamental problems with the intransigence of those in charge of the OWGR (including PGA Tour and European Tour representatives), regarding LIV players and their achievements in LIV tournaments. Three years ago, the exclusion could be explained on the basis that assessments needed to be made as to what LIV is. Now the exclusion is churlish. LIV events are contrived, with their 54-hole, no cut, limited-field formats and confected atmosphere. It's a closed shop in terms of the players who compete. But by equal measure, results achieved in LIV tournaments must count for something. For players currently ranked inside the top 10 or top 50 of the OWGR, that ranking no longer means what it says because players like Rahm have their regular-season results excluded from all consideration. The best aren't the best any more. The last open door for LIV players outside the top 50 is via open qualifying events for the US Open and The Open championships. In the future, it means major championships will exclude players who should rightfully be there. What then happens, the major tournaments will have their importance eroded. The passage for LIV players to play in The Open wasn't non-existent, but the path was so narrow it may as well be. It's a matter of high farce that LIV-aligned players can't earn world golf rankings points. That's not to say that a 54-hole LIV closed-shop event should be ranked on par with a PGA Tour event that has a field four times as deep. LIV is anything but cutthroat. It's not the best of anything. Loading Yet, the 54-hole Big Easy Tour – a development tour in South Africa, composed largely of golfing unknowns – is recognised for OWGR purposes. Examined through the same prism, it's inexplicable that the LIV Tour isn't. That contrived anomaly must be rectified; otherwise, professional golf and its major tournaments will continue to suffer credibility damage. By the status quo, Rahm might well be ranked outside the world's top 300 next year. Reckon that's accurate? The problem is that the highest-ranking officials from the PGA Tour and DP World Tour sit among those who decide which tournaments and tours are recognised for rankings purposes. Fair and reasonable? Or exclusionary and anti-competitive?
Irish Times
15-07-2025
- Climate
- Irish Times
Bryson DeChambeau focuses on links test over Rory McIlroy rivalry as he arrives in Portrush
The room expected a more aggressive energy field from Bryson DeChambeau in his first interview after arriving on Irish soil. His rivalry with Rory McIlroy has refused to die and recently he said he'd love nothing more than to beat him 'especially in front of his own crowd'. McIlroy mused this week on creativity versus power as the best way to get the ball around the links course at Royal Portrush, with those looking into McIlroy's mind reading it as DeChambeau's muscular game perhaps relying too heavily on science rather than the more nuanced 'artistry' required to win. While McIlroy won The Open in 2014 at Royal Liverpool, DeChambeau's best effort to win the oldest championship in the world was a T8 in 2022 at St Andrews. READ MORE Either way, for those hoping for a taste of golf as a blood sport two days before the first players tee off, DeChambeau was a let-down with his willing Californian smile and an open, shoot-the-breeze kind of charm. 'Great question,' he even quipped to one inquiry. 'Just have fun this week and be strategic. I'm trying to ride the wind,' he said. 'A heavy wind is a great way to describe it. It's thick.' There were no snide remarks or concealed digs, no reprisals or escalation of the rivalry. The drama of Portrush was what grabbed him. The LIV Tour player, one of 19 in The Open field, is not used to playing links golf and has been troubled by trying to develop a game that suits a punishing course where it is expected to blow. [ No flies on us as we look forward to new views of the Open Opens in new window ] Yesterday it was modest at 21km/h, although Met Office warned of potential disruption around the local area between 11am and 5pm. Play was halted twice due to a threat of lightning on Monday. 'You're feeling the wind, how much it's coming into you and if it's off the left or right a lot more than normal,' said DeChambeau. 'Okay, how do I feel? How do I turn this into the wind? If you're going to try to ride the wind one time, how do I control and make sure it doesn't go into a crazy place? Because once the ball goes into that wind, it's sayonara. That thing can go forever offline. It will turn east sometimes. 'You know, it's one of those situations where you're in the environment and you go, all right, this feels like a 15-mile-an-hour wind, and all of a sudden it plays like a 30-mile-an-hour wind, and you're like, what the heck?' Bryson DeChambeau during a press conference ahead of the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. He plans to 'have fun this week and be strategic'. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA DeChambeau will open his championship with England's Justin Rose and Scotland's Bob MacIntyre. It is a fact of life on the LIV tour that the players do not have the opportunity to play on links courses and was an issue Joh Rahm brought up last year, bemoaning the fact that without playing on the coastal courses, their chances of winning an Open significantly decline. The 31-year-old also arrived at Portrush with a personality makeover since his last visit in 2019, when he missed the cut. His venture into 'fun' YouTube events and behind-the-scenes footage have softened the image to his 1.5 million subscribers of the beefcake who simply beats the bejaysus out of a golf ball. 'I think people see a different side of me on YouTube, where I can have fun, I can enjoy, I try to relate to others as much as I possibly can has been fun to show,' he said. 'For me, I always go back to what footprint can I leave now? I'm not going to be here forever. I'm not going to win every tournament. 'Yeah, am I going to get frustrated playing bad golf? Yeah. Am I going to want to still sign autographs? Yeah, because I care about the game.' But the golfer, who plays for a LIV team called Crushers, is far from retiring the hot-blooded image. Has no intention of going soft. 'I'll walk through the fire rather than run away from it,' he said. 'I'm still the fiery, want to go, competitive go-getter that I've always been.'
The 42
15-07-2025
- Sport
- The 42
McKibbin out to make a name for himself after generation-spanning practice round at Portrush
DAWN BROKE TODAY at Royal Portrush across their generational golfer, but this time Rory McIlroy had company for his crack-of-dawn practice round. Alongside him was the great Northern Ireland golfer of the previous generation, Darren Clarke, and also the stand-out name among the next generation: Tom McKibbin. Where McIlroy's precocity and reputation preceded him right across the island before ever he excelled on the global stage, McKibbin has arrived as a less-known quantity. Having earned PGA Tour status at the end of his second year on the DP World Tour last year, for instance, McKibbbin has elected to swap his card for the lucrative obscurity of the LIV Tour. To accentuate that sense of separation, McKibbin wasn't at Portrush for the 2019 Open: he was playing an amateur event in the United States, and thus watching on television. 'Once they announced it was going to come back', says McKibbin of the Open's rapid return to Portrush, 'it was a big, big goal of mine to get back here and get playing in it.' He ticked that box by finishing among the top-25 on the DP World Tour last year. Of more relevance on the topic of familiarity is McKibbin's with the course. 'I've been a member here for the last 10 years', he says. 'I used to come up here a lot in the winter time as a kid, when the courses up near home were closed. So I've played it a lot, but up until this week, I'd maybe only played four or five times off the championship tees. Advertisement 'And normally you just come up and play off the members tees and things like that. But I played the British Boys here in 2018, which was my only competitive experience around here. And that's sort of all I can I can go off.' He can also rely on a very solid start to life at the majors. This will be McKibbin's fourth appearance at golf's biggest quartet of championships, and he has made the cut at each of the previous three. He also has the ear of Clarke, who reached out to him for a practice round a few weeks ahead of the tournament. 'I work with a coach that coaches him as well', says McKibbin. 'And we had always been planning to get a little bit of a training camp for a couple of days together. And he was at home, I was at home, so it made sense to go come up for a couple days and get out in the course while it was nice and quiet.' Form gives him another reason to feel positive. He finished in a tie for fourth at LIV Valderrama last week, helping his team win the collective prize while injecting another $750,000 into his bank account. His captain, Jon Rahm, carved out a piece of his own pre-tournament press conference to sing a hosanna to McKibbin. 'He's a fantastic young man', said Rahm. For a 22-year-old to be as calm and collected as he is is quite phenomenal. He's quiet by nature, but even in competition when things go wrong, he stays quite calm, and it's just remarkable and an incredible gift to have for a young player. I don't think I can relate to that whatsoever, so I'm a little bit jealous of that. I think it's going to serve him very well in the long run.' Where McIlroy is visceral and emotional, and Clarke is garrulous and expressive, McKibbin strikes you as almost comically unruffled. He is also swerving expectation: asked whether he could win the Open, he replied, 'I don't know.' 'With links golf and the weather and conditions links golf can bring, it's very hard to set expectations or whatever', he continues. 'You sort of have to just go with the flow, really what you're given, and go out there and try and handle that the best you can, and given the conditions and sort of battle for it. I just want to have my best result in the major, and sort of go from there.'
