Latest news with #TigerWoods
The National
14 hours ago
- Sport
- The National
Best Photos of July 29: From fire-breathing stunts in Ajmer to migrants trying to cross The Channel
1 Joost Luiten produced a memorable hole in one at the par-three fourth in the first round. 2 To date, the only two players to win the PGA Championship after winning the week before are Rory McIlroy (2014 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational) and Tiger Woods (2007, WGC-Bridgestone Invitational). Hideki Matsuyama or Chris Stroud could have made it three. 3 Number of seasons without a major for McIlroy, who finished in a tie for 22nd. 4 Louis Oosthuizen has now finished second in all four of the game's major championships. 5 In the fifth hole of the final round, McIlroy holed his longest putt of the week - from 16ft 8in - for birdie. 6 For the sixth successive year, play was disrupted by bad weather with a delay of one hour and 43 minutes on Friday. 7 Seven under par (64) was the best round of the week, shot by Matsuyama and Francesco Molinari on Day 2. 8 Number of shots taken by Jason Day on the 18th hole in round three after a risky recovery shot backfired. 9 Jon Rahm's age in months the last time Phil Mickelson missed the cut in the US PGA, in 1995. 10 Jimmy Walker's opening round as defending champion was a 10-over-par 81. 11 The par-four 11th coincidentally ranked as the 11th hardest hole overall with a scoring average of 4.192. 12 Paul Casey was a combined 12 under par for his first round in this year's majors. 13 The average world ranking of the last 13 PGA winners before this week was 25. Kevin Kisner began the week ranked 25th. 14 The world ranking of Justin Thomas before his victory. 15 Of the top 15 players after 54 holes, only Oosthuizen had previously won a major. 16 The par-four 16th marks the start of Quail Hollow's so-called "Green Mile" of finishing holes, some of the toughest in golf. 17 The first round scoring average of the last 17 major champions was 67.2. Kisner and Thorbjorn Olesen shot 67 on day one at Quail Hollow. 18 For the first time in 18 majors, the eventual winner was over par after round one (Thomas shot 73).
Daily Mirror
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Golf star dubbed ‘female Tiger Woods' admits she doesn't do ‘rubbish' training
One AIG Women's Open contender was just nine when she was compared to Tiger Woods, but she has always remained her own person, and she has the results to prove it English golf sensation Charley Hull was just nine years old when she first grabbed the spotlight and was hailed as the next Tiger Woods. The prodigy made waves by clinching the 2005 Ladies Golf Union Championship before even hitting double digits. Today, the 29-year-old is still on the lookout for her maiden major victory. Known for her unconventional habit of lighting up cigarettes on the course, Hull could snap up that elusive title at the upcoming AIG Women's Open at Royal Porthcawl this weekend. Granted special permission to smoke during last year's Solheim Cup, Hull has been a force to reckon with since her pre-teen days of beating adult competition. Yet even as a youngster, she had the maturity to shrug off comparisons with a legend like Woods. "I want to be my own person really," a nine-year-old Hull said after her landmark victory 20 years ago. "Everyone is saying you're the new Tiger Woods and I think yeah, well, whatever. I want to be myself." True to her word, Hull has carved out her own identity, not just due to smoking on the course but also in her approach to practice. With top-six finishes in all five women's majors under her belt, Hull is certainly doing things her way. The Kettering-born star, who wed MMA fighter Ozzie Smith in 2019 before divorcing two years later, has confessed she's not a fan of training specifically for her sport and favours her own fitness regimes. She also takes part in Hyrox competitions and was gutted when illness hampered her training at the Evian Championship earlier this year. "I've not been [to the] gym in two weeks and I'm not going to go to the gym for another two weeks," she said upon making a comeback at the Scottish Open last week. "I need my immune system to catch up. It drives me bonkers not being able to go to the gym." To Hull, staying active is integral to her lifestyle rather than just her golfing pursuits. And the two-time LPGA Tour winner has dismissed golf-specific workouts as "a load of rubbish," admitting she finds it hard to engage with them. In an interview with BBC Sport, she said: "I don't train for golf, I train to keep my body and mind fit. I've no interest in doing it for golf. I just do it for myself, as a hobby, trying to beat my own fitness goals. "It's all this boring movement stuff I've been doing since I was 14. It's just not for me." Regarding her notorious smoking habit, Hull recently owned up to puffing on up to 40 cigarettes a day until not long ago. She has said smoking helps her unwind on the course, although she had to abstain during the 2024 Paris Olympics due to a ban. Since then, she seems to have quit after placing a £10,000 bet with mate Ryan Evans that she could abstain for two months. Hull, who caught the public's eye by sitting on a tee box at the Women's US Open, doesn't seem to have touched a cigarette since. "I think it's the easiest thing I've ever done in my life," she said at the Black Desert Championship in May. "Yeah, it's pretty, pretty, pretty easy. I'm a strong-minded person. Usually when I put my head and my mind to something I can do it."
New York Times
a day ago
- Business
- New York Times
Scottie Scheffler or the S&P 500: Which has been more profitable over the last 4 years?
It's no secret Scottie Scheffler is the best golfer in the world and has been for quite some time. He has been ranked No. 1 in the Data Golf world rankings every week since early September 2023, and his current rating is the best by anybody since Tiger Woods' untouchable 2000 season. After wrapping up his fourth career major — and second of the 2025 season — with a win at the Open Championship on July 20, Scheffler finished one of the all-time seasons at the major championships in style. Now he'll try to become the first player ever to defend his FedEx Cup crown as we head down the home stretch of the PGA Tour schedule. Advertisement That's all pretty impressive stuff, even though Scheffler tends to shy away from the all-time comparisons. But did you know Scheffler also doubles as a high-yield retirement fund? If you'd timed things right at the start of his peak, you could have beaten the stock market — by a lot — just by betting on Scheffler to win every time he teed it up. There's a good case to be made that Scheffler himself is the greatest growth stock in sports. That's why we're introducing the SCOTTIE index — aka the Scheffler-Centric Outperformance Tracker for Tournament Investment Efficiency — a hypothetical fund based solely around betting on Scheffler to win golf tournaments. Here's how it works: We'll track how much in net profits an investor would have made if he or she had either: Early in Scheffler's PGA Tour career, this would admittedly not have looked like a great financial plan. He didn't win any of his first 60 tournaments after joining the Tour full-time in 2019-20, so a bet-100-bucks-each-time-he-plays strategy would have left you $6,000 in the hole at the low point of that drought, if you'd bet on every tournament in that span. However, once Scheffler began to hit his stride, the money started to stack up. You could have made back $2,425 on a $100 play when he won the 2022 WM Phoenix Open at +2425 odds — and by the end of his stretch of four wins in six tournaments early that year, culminating in his first major W at the Masters, you would have actually been up $1,775 despite the early losses. And that's if you began using the SCOTTIE index when he made the leap from the Korn Ferry to the PGA Tour in 2019. If you'd waited a few years to start playing, you could have really made bank. If someone bet $100 on Scheffler to win every tournament he entered since the beginning of the 2022 season, they would currently be up by a cumulative total of $8,964 after banking another $487 with Scheffler's win at the Open Championship. That's a 101.9 percent overall return on our $8,800 total investment in the SCOTTIE index — or a 20 percent compound annual growth rate, more than doubling our money in just under four full seasons of action. Advertisement By comparison, our alternative investor who dropped $100 in the S&P 500 every time Scheffler teed it up would currently be up just $3,092 on that $8,800 investment. A 35.1 percent overall return on investment is nothing to sneeze at — it's an 8.2 percent annual growth rate, which is respectable in any portfolio — but it's not quite a SCOTTIE-level return. Sure, betting on golf winners is what the pros call a 'high-volatility' asset class. The $487 net profit we would have earned from the Open is indicative of how the SCOTTIE index is also experiencing diminishing returns lately. Oddsmakers have caught up to his dominance, so his odds have shortened accordingly — the more he wins now, the less you win when he wins. ($7,250 of our entire profits came through his win at the Players' Championship in March 2023.) But still, Scheffler has won 24 percent of the events he's entered since the start of 2022, a rate that is comparable to Woods' (him again!) and well ahead of any other contemporary golfer on the all-time list. With a 67 percent success rate at converting 54-hole leads (or co-leads) to victories — and a current streak of eight in a row — plus no finishes outside the top eight since March 16, he is as solid an investment as it gets in the sport. That's true even if the SCOTTIE index is meant to be a bit of silly fun — obviously, this isn't a recommendation to liquidate your 401(k) and go all in on outright golf bets. But it says a lot about how dominant Scheffler's been lately that he has basically run out of other pro golfers to beat. Now he's beating the market, too — and by roughly as comfortable a margin as he laid on the field in his two major wins this year. Neil Paine is a freelance writer whose work also appears regularly at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sherwood News and his eponymous Substack. He is the former Sports Editor at FiveThirtyEight, and was also an analytics consultant for the NBA's Atlanta Hawks.
Indianapolis Star
2 days ago
- Sport
- Indianapolis Star
Charlie Woods, Tiger's son, competing in Junior PGA Championships at Purdue
This week's 2025 Junior PGA Championships at Purdue's Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex will bring future professional golf stars to central Indiana. It may also bring one of the established greats of the game to West Lafayette as a spectator. Charlie Woods' name appeared on the entry list Sunday for the four-day tournament, which begins Tuesday. He is the son of 15-time PGA major winner Tiger Woods. Tournament organizers typically have held off confirming Woods will appear at events until closer to the start. Charlie Woods is one of 312 golfers — 156 apiece in the boys and girls tournaments — who will compete on the Kampen-Cosler and Ackerman-Allen courses. Past winners include recognizable pro tour names from Inbee Park to Trevor Immelman. Top-ranked competitors for this event include Luke Colton and Giuseppe Puebla on the boys side and Asterisk Talley, Yujie Liu and Anna Fang on the girls. The 16-year-old Woods won the American Junior Golf Association's Team TaylorMade Invitational in May. His father, who won the U.S. Junior Amateur three times, was seen following his son at the same event last week. Tiger Woods has also occasionally served at his son's caddie at tournaments. Tiger Woods also competed in the Junior PGA Championships during his stellar amateur career. He finished runner-up to Chris Couch in 1990. Hellish, beautiful, infuriating, serene: The best 18 single holes of golf in Indiana The family shared a viral moment last year when the son, playing with his father, achieved his first hole-in-one at the PNC Championship. In March, Tiger Woods announced he suffered a ruptured Achilles while training at home for his return to the PGA Tour. Admission is free for the tournament, as is parking at nearby Ross-Ade Stadium. Fans can take golf cart shuttles to the event.
Irish Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Daily Mirror
Inside Kerry star David Clifford's life with girlfriend Shauna and son Óigí
David Clifford exploded onto the intercounty stage in 2018. Since his Kerry debut, he's been hailed as "a once in a generation" talent, with his abilities drawing comparisons to global icons like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan. These accolades and his on-field achievements, including one All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, five Munster titles and three National Leagues, mean everything to the 26 year old – yet he stays humble and down-to-earth. He also claimed Young Footballer of the Year in 2018 and Footballer of the Year in 2022 and 2023. Earlier this year, Clifford spoke to our colleagues at RSVP Magazine to discuss his life off the field with his partner and son. A viral photograph captured you with Kerry performance coach Tony Griffin following the All-Ireland Football Final defeat to Dublin. Can you recall how you felt in that moment? There was a lot of disappointment and regret, I suppose. Croke Park is the best place to be when you win and the worst place to be when you lose. To have somebody like Tony and to have such close friends on the team shows how lucky you are. You survive through the bad days together. You must move on from it too, your life can't revolve around whether you win or lose a game. It would make for a long career for you, because you're going to have more losses than wins. Is it hard not to overthink things? We're all guilty of that. You need to be well settled off the field and have plenty going on away from sport. It's very easy to think about football all the time, but then there would be no enjoyment in it anymore. Off the field, for you, is it hard to get the balance right? It can be at times. The people around us make a lot of sacrifices so we can go out and train so many evenings a week. I try to be settled and relaxed, and I try to enjoy my life as much as I can. That allows me to put everything into the game. Your son Óigí is nearly three now. Does he recognise you on TV and know what the green and gold jersey means? Yeah, he's gone mad for sport at the moment. He's wearing jerseys and he loves it. But he's not too happy with me going out training because I'm going to be gone for a couple of hours. He loves coming along with me to watch the Fossa games at the weekend. He's great craic. Does that add an extra level of enjoyment for you, seeing him loving it as well? I hadn't thought about it like that until you said it. He's also copying the celebrations of the soccer players he sees. He's getting to that age now where I've an extra reason to go out there and play. Óigí is clearly gearing up for the All-Ireland! The structure of the championship has changed. The national league, provincial championship, round robin series and knock-out games are condensed into the first seven months of the year. How are you finding it? When you're stuck in the middle of it and you're going to work, training and matches, you don't think about that kind of stuff. It's great to have games and the structure at the moment is great because you've got a game, then a week off and then another game. You're recovering for a week and then preparing for a week. The four or five week gaps in the old system used to be long. I like that element of it. We're getting a lot of good competitive games, and there's very few negatives to that. Kildare legend Johnny Doyle won a club championship at 45 years old last year. Would you like to do something similar? It's hard to know. I want to play for as long as I can anyway. The day you're inside in the full-forward line and some young fella beats you out to the first couple of balls, that's probably when it's time to move on [laughs]. There has been talk of a return to September All-Ireland finals again. What do you think of that? I'm very happy with the split season. From a selfish point of view, as a teacher anyway. Nobody wants to hear about teachers and their holidays, but we get to have a month of summer holidays after the All-Ireland. That's very enjoyable, being able to go away. On the other side of it, when I was in primary school the build-up to an All-Ireland final in September was brilliant. There are pros and cons. What's your own schedule like? Much has been made about how busy you are with Fossa, East Kerry and Kerry. We're very lucky with our three managers, there's no problem if we need breaks here and there. We're conscious that winning doesn't last forever. East Kerry hadn't won the county championship for 20 years and Fossa has never won the junior. We have to milk it while we have it. It's important to get the breaks as well. It's not just tough physically, it's mentally draining as well. You have to deal with the highs and lows and the build-up to games. How do you deal with the pressure of being David Clifford in a football-mad county? The main thing is trying not to think about it like that. I have different targets for myself or different targets for the team. You always hear [Manchester City manager] Pep Guardiola saying that having targets takes the emotion out of the game. As boring as it sounds, that tends to work a lot of the time. You're big into other sports and you're a Celtic fan. How important is that, having interests away from GAA? That's my approach anyway, I try to have interests in other things. For other people, their interests may not be sports. At the moment, it's impossible to keep up with all the sports. You'd nearly want two or three TVs on the go [laughs]. You've been compared to Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and been called a "once in a generation" talent. What's that like? There's an uncomfortable nature to it. I learned from my parents to be humble and not to appear arrogant. You don't want to be talking about yourself in that light, you want to let it brush off you. The Pittsburgh Steelers were in Dublin last April. Would you ever try your hand at playing in the NFL? It hasn't really crossed my mind. I'm a relatively safe person in that I'm settled in a job and settled in life. To turn that upside down to try something new isn't something that would appeal to me too much. It's class to see the Irish players that have joined the NFL. We're looking forward to seeing if some of them can get on the pitch. How does it feel to be settled so young? You've made your career in football at an early age, you've a child and a good job. Maybe it will all turn upside down at some stage [jokes]. It's fine, that's just the way things have happened for me. Things fell into place nicely. I'm far from perfect, let that be known. I enjoy life and I feel like I've a great life. I'm very lucky with the people I have around me. You were one of the youngest players when you joined the Kerry panel in 2018 and six years on you're one of the most experienced in the dressing room. It's hard to believe. A lot of us came into the panel together in 2018 and 2019, so we've gone through the years together. Without even noticing it, we've had some incredible life experiences with trips away and big wins and defeats. Every year before you commit to another season you have to make sure you're still enjoying it – thankfully, I still am. Your brother Paudie is team captain this year, what's that like? It's much the same as before. Paudie and I don't spend too much time talking about football together, but we do spend a lot of time together in general whether it's golfing or being around our same circle of friends. Him being captain is great for Fossa too. If you finished your career with one All-Ireland win, how would you accept that? You'd like to win the All-Ireland every year, but that's not the reality of it. If I was to retire I wouldn't be going around telling people that I've an All-Ireland medal or don't have an All-Ireland medal. While they're great to win and you do everything in your power to win them, you just have to get over it. Hopefully, that won't be the case! David Clifford of Kerry celebrates his goal (Image: ©INPHO/James Lawlor)
