Latest news with #PayneStewart
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Paul Azinger is selected to receive the PGA Tour's Payne Stewart Award
Paul Azinger is getting what he considers the greatest honor of his career. He was announced Monday as recipient of the Payne Stewart Award that recognizes traits belonging to his closest friend on the PGA Tour. The award began in 2000, a year after Stewart and three others died in a plane crash. It has become one of the top awards in golf, with a ceremony televised live from Atlanta during the Tour Championship in August. "To be named the recipient of this award, representing my dearest friend, is one of the proudest moments in my life,' Azinger said. Azinger is a 12-time winner on the PGA Tour, including the 1993 PGA Championship that he won in a playoff. He is equally known for reshaping the Ryder Cup qualification system and leading the Americans to a rare victory against Europe in 2008. He now works as a television analyst for the PGA Tour Champions. The award honors a player who shows character, sportsmanship and commitment to charity. Azinger and his wife, Toni, in 2021 opened the Azinger Family Compassion Center, which serves vulnerable and struggling families in Manatee County in Florida. The Southern Company, which sponsors the award, donates $300,000 toward the recipient's charity and $200,000 to Stewart Family Foundation programs. Stewart, a three-time major champion and the reigning U.S. Open champion when he died in 1999, and Azinger were close friends on tour. Azinger was the main speaker at Stewart's memorial service, rolling up his pants to look like plus fours and wearing a tam o'shanter cap. 'Payne displayed the ultimate character, sportsmanship and service to others throughout his career. He set the standard for how to represent the game of golf, so to be recognized for this award is truly humbling," Azinger said. The ceremony will be Aug. 19. Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Byron Nelson received the inaugural award. Brandt Snedeker received it last year. Other winners over the years have included Tom Watson and Nick Price, Steve Stricker and Tom Lehman. 'If there is one person who knows all the positive traits that exemplified Payne Stewart, it's his close friend, Paul," PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said. "His values align with the character and charitable pursuits that Payne displayed throughout his career, and it's only fitting that Paul be honored with this year's award.' ___ AP golf:
Irish Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
It looks like love for Bryson DeChambeau at the US PGA
Maybe its real: the love. Maybe the low-fives, the fist bumps, the hollering, all of it, represents a change of heart. Maybe we didn't know him before. Maybe he changed. Maybe it's an act. Because Bryson DeChambeau wasn't always loved. He was brilliant and brash and cocky and hard to embrace. He was polarising. Different. He thought he had the game worked out. Him? Why him? It was kooky stuff, too, designed by science. DeChambeau was golf's Elon Musk . Thinking outside the box? He refused to recognise the box. No box. He came out on tour wearing a flat cap as a homage to Ben Hogan, one of the greatest players of all time, and Payne Stewart, one of the most beloved American players of the last 50 years. So, what was he saying about himself with the flat cap? Modesty didn't forbid him. READ MORE DeChambeau turned up at the Masters in 2020 and said the par at Augusta for him was 67. 'That's not me being big-headed,' he said. The denial was hopeless. In his next 13 rounds at the tournament, he only hit that number once. But that's what he was like. At Augusta, all the other players whisper and genuflect, like they're in church. DeChambeau was incapable of lowering his voice. Defecting to LIV Golf in the middle of 2022 felt like the final breakdown in whatever relationship existed between him and the masses who followed the PGA Tour. Condemnation rained down on his head. He was vilified for his ego and his greed. It was easy to beat down on DeChambeau. Everybody had years of practice. But everything is different now. As the US Open last year, he reached out to the galleries in a way that he had never done before. He signed autographs and stood for selfies and gave his time, generously. After every good shot he looked up and acknowledged the cheers. He smiled. Bryson DeChambeau was at no risk of being confused with BA Baracus at Quail Hollow on Friday. Photograph: Kevin) The flat cap is long gone and the BA Baracus muscles that he had cultivated during the pandemic have been planed back too. The know-it-all shtick has been toned down. Relatable is a buzzword, but that's what he has become. [ The 80s: when men were men and TV shows were once a week Opens in new window ] He started doing videos on YouTube that seemed to strike a chord with people who wanted to watch golf and have a giggle. Some of it is preposterous and much of it is overblown and cartoonish, but he has an audience of 1.8 million on that platform now. Many PGA Tour events on free-to-air TV channels fall well short of those numbers. Not for the first time in his career, DeChambeau was a phenomenon. In the morning wave at the US PGA Championship on Friday he dragged the biggest galleries around the course. In his three-ball were Gary Woodland, a US Open winner, and Viktor Hovland, one of the most exciting players in the game. The fans, though, only had eyes for Bryson. Can we call him Bryson? On the roped passageway between each green and the next tee box there is ample room to walk down the middle and look straight ahead, but DeChambeau deliberately walks by the rope and makes contact with every outstretched hand. Most of them are filming the interaction on their phones and shouting encouragement. 'Go Bryson.' Simple. Warm. Loud. Repeated on a loop. Gary Woodland (left) and Bryson DeChambeau using rangefinders at the 17th tee during Friday's action at the US PGA. Photograph: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images None of the other players are prepared to engage in that way during a round. Not on every hole. If it's an act, DeChambeau has perfected it. At the Majors he has become a player again. In his last eight appearances, he has recorded four top-five finishes, including a victory at the US Open last year and a runner-up finish in the US PGA, when he shot a staggering bogey-free 64 on the last day. This week he was one of the favourites because, as he said, Quail Hollow is a 'bomber's paradise' and he hits the ball miles. On the 11th hole on Friday his caddie advised him to hit his drive over the right corner of the bunker, just on the dog-leg. For safety. Bryson agreed and then thrashed it over the first bunker and the second bunker, obliterating the dog-leg and splitting the fairway. On that hole his drive went 327 yards; on the previous hole it went 351; on the next, 347. At the 16th on Thursday, he hit it 362 yards. His good shots are spectacular; his bad shots are spectacular. By the end of round two he was in the hunt. The tournament needed him. Do we love him? We love the act. That's enough.
TimesLIVE
14-05-2025
- General
- TimesLIVE
Lack of oxygen likely caused 2023 air crash that prompted Washington, DC scare
A lack of oxygen likely incapacitated the pilot of a Cessna Citation 560 in June 2023 that prompted the US military to scramble F-16 fighter jets before the private jet crashed in Virginia, killing all four occupants, a final report said on Tuesday. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it is likely the pilot and three passengers became incapacitated during the aircraft's climb to cruise altitude. The board said it appeared the plane was on autopilot at the time when it crossed into restricted airspace around Washington. Maintenance records raised questions about the issues around the pressurisation and environmental control system weeks before that the crash the owner had declined to address. The jet fighters created a sonic boom over the US capital region as they pursued the errant Cessna. A Cessna Citation can carry seven to 12 passengers. The US military attempted to contact the pilot, who was unresponsive, until the Cessna crashed in mountains in Montebello, Virginia near the George Washington National Forest. The Cessna began the day at its home airport in Melbourne, Florida, and later took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Tennessee. It was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York, about 80km east of Manhattan. The NTSB said the plane reached the airport and then made nearly a 180-degree turn. The airplane was intercepted by US air force fighter aircraft minutes before it crashed. Pilots observed a person seated in the left cockpit seat slumped completely over into the right seat who remained motionless and unresponsive to radio transmissions, intercept flight manoeuvres and flare deployments. Incidents involving unresponsive pilots are not unprecedented. Golfer Payne Stewart died in 1999 along with five others after the aircraft he was in flew thousands of kilometres with the pilot and passengers unresponsive. The plane eventually crashed in South Dakota with no survivors. In the case of Stewart's flight, the plane lost cabin pressure, causing the occupants to lose consciousness because of oxygen deprivation.
NBC Sports
09-04-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Patrick recounts caddying at Augusta National
Dan Patrick reminisces about his experience caddying at Augusta National alongside Payne Stewart and Fred Couples, reflecting on what makes the legendary course so unique ahead of this year's Masters Tournament.
