His brother’s escape from the terrorist attacks in 2001 motivated Robert Saleh to chase his dreams, do something “that will make me happy” and coach football.
Tuesday night’s matchup won’t be like other games on the schedule. The former Blues captain reflects on his time with the team, and looks ahead.
Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch are closing in on 60 Cup wins. Denny Hamlin seeks to make history in the Daytona 500.
How it works: Each week, our experts from PGATOUR.COM will make their selections in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. Each lineup consists of four starters and two bench players that can be rotated after each round. Adding to the challenge is that every golfer can be used only three times per each of four Segments. The first fantasy golf game to utilize live ShotLink data, PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf allows you to see scores update live during competition. Aside from the experts below, Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton breaks down the field at this year’s Farmers Insurance Open in his edition of the Power Rankings. For more fantasy, check out Rookie Watch, Qualifiers and Reshuffle. THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN OUR EXPERTS? The PGA TOUR Experts league is once again open to the public. You can play our free fantasy game and see how you measure up against our experts below. Joining the league is simple. Just click here to sign up or log in. Once you create your team, click the “Leagues” tab and search for “PGA TOUR Experts.” After that? Pick your players and start talking smack. Want to represent the fans against our experts? SEASON SEGMENT As of January 26, 2021, PGATOUR.COM will no longer support Livefyre commenting on our website. We invite you to join the conversation by following and interacting with Rob Bolton on Twitter (@RobBoltonGolf) and PGA TOUR Twitter, Facebook and Instagram channels. If you have any feedback or questions, please reach out to us via the Contact Us page."
There’s no such thing as an easy case on this year’s ballot. We get you ready for the Class of 2021 announcement.
SAN DIEGO - Marc Leishman wasn’t one to spend time on the range as he was growing up - and who could blame him. In those days you had to pick up your own range balls at Warrnambool Golf Club. Instead, he would use the course proper as his practice facility, challenging his mates to contests on each hole. Warrnambool is a coastal town in Victoria, Australia, a little over three hours drive from Melbourne. The course was rarely full, which allowed a group of youngsters to spend a bunch of time on each hole without slowing pace of play. "It might take us three hours to play nine holes - not holding people up - but we forever came up with things to do," Leishman recalls. "We put ourselves behind trees, or in divots, or tough bunker lies – really in all sorts of spots where we had to use our imagination. We had a lot of fun." Imagination. It's a word used less and less in modern golf. The art of golf is - at times - being bludgeoned by the science. In the past, the likes of Seve Ballesteros would wow the masses with his creativity from all over the course. In more modern times, Bubba Watson has shaped the ball in ridiculous ways. But now the game is skewed towards the athletic prowess and strength of a player and brute force can get you to places never seen before. We have players like Bryson DeChambeau following the science of the swing and of the body and calculating all sorts of variables around every shot to chase perfection. We have technology and stats measuring everything. Gadgets and gizmos a plenty, whozits and whatsits galore. Science has indeed taken the sport to incredible new heights. But science isn't everyone's best subject. Leishman has always been an artist. The joy in his golf comes from shaping the ball both ways or hitting it high or low on demand. He craves hard and fast courses and thrives in the wind. He loves being able to hit the same club across a wide yardage range and gets juiced up when the opportunity to paint a picture surfaces in his game. "That’s when I play my best golf - when I have to use my imagination. Augusta requires a lot of it, the British Open requires a lot of it and it’s what makes golf fun for me," Leishman says. I would call myself an old school pro. The game is an artistic game for me, and I love when you have to control it on the ground and through the air and you really have to think. It is a style that has seen him win five times on the PGA TOUR including last year at the Farmers Insurance Open where he defends this week at Torrey Pines. In the final round a year ago, Leishman couldn't buy a fairway. He was 70th in the field for Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee losing -1.235 to the field. But he invented ways to get himself to the greens regardless of the inaccuracy and gained +4.778 strokes putting as he made 151 feet, four inches worth or putts. Not long after Leishman was runner up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by Mastercard, an event he won in 2017. Then he opened THE PLAYERS Championship with a 5-under 67, his career best first round at TPC Sawgrass where his scoring average is a not so impressive 72.25. At seventh in the FedExCup, he was rolling along nicely. Of course, we all know what happened to the world next. But Leishman had no clue the COVID-19 pandemic would derail his form so significantly. Not many players - if any - spiraled like he did after the extended pandemic break. In his six regular season starts upon return, Leishman missed three cuts and posted a T40 as his best result. His early season form kept him in the duration of the three FedExCup Playoffs but he was a virtual passenger. Leishman missed the cut at THE NORTHERN TRUST. He then shot 80-78-79-73 (+30) in the no-cut BMW Championship (another tournament he's won before) to be dead last, nine shots worse than second last and 34 shots behind winner Jon Rahm. In the TOUR Championship he was 29th of 30 players. His start to the 2020-21 season wasn't much better as the now 37-year-old missed the cut at the U.S. Open followed by a T52 and T70 at the limited field CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK and ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD. It wasn't pretty. So, what happened? It was a bunch of factors but at its core - Leishman got bogged down studying science and got frustrated with his art not making it to a gallery. "Having a big rest over the pandemic break was good for me to be with family but for my golf game it wasn’t so good for me," Leishman explains to PGATOUR.COM. “Normally on weeks off I don’t play at all, so I virtually have never played golf with no crowds. It’s either in a tournament or in a practice round at a tournament so that was very new to me. Even when I play golf back home in Warrnambool there are people watching me so returning without fans was weird. I really struggled with energy." The energy he refers to is the competitive instinct of the artist who loves to entertain and who thrives on an internal underdog factor. Leishman long went unheralded by the American public who confused him with other golfers and even when his profile rose, and he was grouped with big name stars, Leishman's nationality usually meant he'd be fighting for the majority of support. It was fuel for him. "When you’re struggling with crowds around it can still be fun because if there are 50 people watching and you hit a shot from the trees you can kind of entertain or show off your skills a little bit," Leishman says. "It gets you engaged even if you’re going to miss the cut – you think these people might remember this if I pull it off. But I was in the trees a lot last year and you can’t even show off when no one is there. "As an artistic player, when you start drawing dodgy pictures with your shots, which I was doing, you start to think about it too much and I started getting technical. I started thinking science and that's never good for me. I was looking in the wrong places for solutions." Now, it's not like Leishman hadn't had some tough weeks in his career before. But in normal circumstances, time with coach Denis McDade would quickly fix any swing issues. Problem was McDade is based in Australia and the pandemic made travel to the U.S. very difficult indeed. Sure Leishman could have looked for a local coach but he's a fiercely loyal type of guy. He's had the same coach and same caddie since he burst on to the PGA TOUR and was Rookie of the Year in 2009. McDade is loyal also. Despite plenty of roadblocks he made his way to the U.S. in late October last year and hooked up with Leishman in Los Angeles during the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP. After watching the opening two rounds intently, he had the answer. "It was huge for him to come over and a massive commitment from him," Leishman says. "He has a family back home, but he was over here for six weeks and he got home and had to spend two weeks mandatory quarantine in a hotel room where you don’t get given a room key. He missed his birthday and his wedding anniversary during quarantine, so I am really appreciative and want to thank him. "In the end it wasn't really my swing at all. It was the way I was getting into the ball - I was standing too far away from it," Leishman reveals. "I was being technical on the tee; I was doing drills in the tournaments before every tee shot which I had never done before, and it was getting me too far away from the ball and my weight too far on the toes. When my weight is on the toes my balance is bad and I miss it right and left and it’s just a disaster – I was in a hiding to nothing. "So, it was something really simple and that's where it’s really good that I’ve been with Denis for 18 years. He knows my tendencies and he saw it straight away. If I had gone to someone else or jumped ship with him not being able to come over, a new coach may or may not be able to see that." The results were near instant. In his next start at The Masters, Leishman was T13, hitting the ball better than most of the field but only falling behind on the greens. Two weeks ago at the Sony Open in Hawaii, he finished T4, his first top 10 since the pandemic break. Now he gets another crack at Torrey Pines where he has a win, two runner ups and two further top 10s in his portfolio. Look out. The artist is back.
Hollywood legend Robert de Niro and Star Wars’ John Boyega will feature in a fictional crime movie set in the world of Formula One.
Playing in his first game in Cleveland in more than two years, LeBron James made up for lost time, single-handedly outscoring his former team in the fourth quarter en route to a season-high 46 points and 10-0 road winning streak for the Lakers.
Andrew Wiggins delivered for the Warriors on both ends of the floor Monday night against his former team and afterward spoke about the comfort level he has found playing in Golden State’s “winning” and “organized” culture.
He got the text right before Christmas. I need to talk to you, wrote Tiger Woods. Davis Love III told him to call anytime. That wasn't good enough for Woods. He wanted to talk immediately. "So, I called him, and he just said, ‘Hey, congratulations. You're going to be the next Presidents Cup captain,'" Love recalled recently from Hawaii, as he watched whales ride waves in the Pacific Ocean. Then came the kicker. "And I'm going to make your team," Woods told him firmly. Love remembers finding a place to sit down and let the news sink in. He was thrilled to accept, even if he'd half expected it. He would have been happy for Woods lead the team again in 2022 after his victorious run as a playing captain who also went unbeaten in ‘19. RELATED: Press release on Love III named U.S. Team captain | How Davis Love III and Michael Jordan bonded over golf When he and Woods ended their phone call, Love went into the house and found his wife Robin. "You're not going to believe what Tiger just said," he told her. "Are you ready for this? We've been through a lot in the last year, certainly in the last 10 years, and the first thing is, I can't do it without her. So, I said, ‘Are you ready to do this again?' "She thought about it for a while, and she said, ‘Yeah.' And I said, ‘No, are you excited about doing this again?' And she said, ‘Yeah.'" So the decision was made. And the 2022 Presidents Cup is a perfect fit for the 56-year-old Love. It will be played at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, where Love was born. And while he moved to Atlanta well before his first birthday, Love has deep roots in North Carolina. He was a three-time All-American at UNC and a three-time winner of the Wyndham Championship, most recently in 2015 at the age of 51. The World Golf Hall of Famer has a pedigree that makes him uniquely qualified to be captain, too. Love played in the first six Presidents Cups, compiling a record of 16-8-4, and served as an assistant in three more. He also played in six Ryder Cups and is a two-time U.S. captain, as well as a three-time vice-captain, including for the matches this fall at Whistling Straits. Once Love knew he had his wife's support, he talked with PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan. The conversations about who would be the next U.S. Presidents Cup Captain had gotten underway early in 2020. Then COVID-19 hit, and priorities shifted. The Ryder Cup was postponed until 2021, which meant another year's delay for the Presidents Cup, too. The TOUR was able to return to competition safely in June, though, and the conversations about a potential captain resumed last fall. Once the decision was made, Monahan let Woods do the honors. "Jay said, ‘I just thought you guys are running the show now and I thought it’d be cool if Tiger was the one to tell you,'" Love recalls. "So then when I call Jay, (he says), ‘Congratulations,' and I go, ‘Aren’t we even going to talk about this?' He goes, ‘No, it’s done. You’ll be great.' "And I think that’s neat of Jay to give us that responsibility of, hey, it’s your guys' team and we’ll make this decision. And once we do, we’ll let Tiger hand it off to Davis and Davis hand it off to the next guy." Love is part of a nucleus of players - Woods, Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker, Zach Johnson and Jim Furyk, among them - who became part of a task force in 2014 to develop the kind of dynamic leadership that would help reverse the fortunes of the Americans, who had lost six of the last seven Ryder Cups. "This is what’s driven us, and me especially, since 2014 reset, is Phil said we have to give these guys the best chance we can to succeed every year," Love says. "And that’s what’s fun. So, if I’m captain or assistant captain or cart driver, I don’t really care. "I just want to help give Dustin (Johnson) and Brooks (Koepka) and Tiger and all the guys on the team, a chance to win." The Americans have fared much better against the Internationals in the Presidents Cup, which began in 1994 when Love went unbeaten at 4-0-1. But a year ago, the U.S. had to rally in Sunday's Singles to seal the win, and Love knows the narrow defeat had to be a confidence-builder for incoming Captain Trevor Immelman's team. "They have an up-and-coming, excited, we-came-close attitude," Love says. "So, we're not going to sit back. We’re going to try new things and try and get better and obviously build on what we’ve been building on since ’14." Charlotte is already showing signs of major support for the Presidents Cup, too. Corporate sales are extremely strong with all 12 of the highest-priced hospitality venues sold out. Ditto for the VIP tickets for the Green Mile Club that are priced at five figures. "I’m like, Holy Cow, this is going to be massive," Love says. "So, I’m getting more and more excited for our team about the possibilities. … We've been on an upward swing. New York (at Liberty National in 2017) was great. But this is going to be as much of a home game as I think maybe we’ve ever had for the Presidents Cup. "You know how excited North Carolina is going to be. And we'll throw a little Carolina blue in the outfits every once in a while. … I’m going to get one of (UNC basketball coach) Roy Williams’s plaid jackets to wear." Love may or may not be kidding about that dubious piece of sartorial splendor. But he has relationships with sports figures across the state like Williams and NASCAR great Jimmie Johnson and Carolina football coach Mack Brown and even Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who spoke to the U.S. Team prior to the 2018 Ryder Cup, that he hopes to leverage to make the week a special experience for his team. "And you just think about Michael," Love says of NBA great Michael Jordan, who is his old friend and golfing partner from when the two were in school together at Chapel Hill. "He loves coming to these matches." Love says he relies on his long-time sports psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella, for most of his coaching advice. But he thrives on the opportunity to pick the brain of people like Williams and Krzyzewski and New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, who met with Love twice in 2016 when he spent time at the team's practice facility. "That was really cool," Love says. "And you tell a player, you tell him look, trust me, you just do your job and don’t worry about what the other guys are doing. That’s what Coach Belichick does. Do your job and trust that guy’s going to do his job. "I watched Roy give a speech to the Carolina golf teams and boosters one time. I’m like, holy cow, this guy loves his school, and he loves his team, you know? And if you can express to your players, hey, look, I’m going to do whatever it takes to make you guys successful. Just come to me. "Coach (Dean) Smith was the same way his players. His players weren’t players for him for four years, they were family. I think that the relationship I have with Dustin to a new guy, like Kevin Na, that I don’t know that well, that’s where we have to be better as captains is getting to know guys and letting them know that we’ve learned from other coaches. This is how we’re going to be successful if we just do these things. "They’re really, really good golfers. We don’t have to worry about that part of it." Love may say he doesn't like to get up and give speeches. But he's much better at it than he thinks - listen to the one he made at his induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame, for example — and he's extremely passionate about the opportunities he's had to represent his country as a player and a captain. "I remember Michael Phelps saying to Fred Couples and I in the middle of the fairway in Chicago one day during the Ryder Cup, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever done," Love recalls. "Well, wait a minute, you are USA sports. You’re gold. You’re our guy. You’re who we want to be. "And it made me realize we are Team USA. That’s the way he’s looking at it. We’re part of Team USA. We’re just the golf team. And we’ve taken that approach every year. We don’t get a three-year break between Olympics. We’re Team USA. "I watched from when it was amateurs to pros in basketball and the approach that Team USA Basketball has to take now to build a team. They just don’t show up in their private jets. They’re thinking about it all year long. How are we going to build this team to get ready to go to the Olympics? And that’s what we have to do, but we have to do it every year. We have to be ready. We have to be motivated. "We’re thinking about it, talking about it. We get to do it once a year. You get four majors, but we get one team event a year and we love getting on the bus, competing and hanging out." And Love, for his part, has made plenty of memories at the Presidents Cup. One started out to be imminently forgettable, though, when he was locked in a tight match with Robert Allenby on Sunday in 2003 at the Links at Fancourt in South Africa. It was the final match of the day, and Love held a 1-up advantage when he teed off on the par-5 18th. Maintain that advantage and the U.S. would retain the Cup, so he was understandably nervous - and the pressure increased tenfold when Captain Jack Nicklaus came out into the fairway to speak to Love. Love proceeded to miss the green with his 4-iron, chunk a chip and lose the hole. The match halved, the score was tied 17-17, and Woods and Ernie Els embarked on a thrilling three-hole playoff that ended when Nicklaus and International Team Captain Gary Player decided to share the Cup in the name of sportsmanship. "Jack, still, if we sit down and have lunch at Memorial, he goes you remember that 4-iron? Why didn’t you hit that 4-iron on the green on the last hole?" Love says, laughing. "And I go, because Jack Nicklaus walked out there and told me to hit the ball in the green. I panicked. I hit four crappy shots after you walked out there. "But to say that I played on the Presidents Cup team and Jack Nickaus coached me is worth it. And I made Tiger the hero. So, I created one of the great Presidents Cup moments. If I’d have just finished off Robert Allenby it would have been boring. Right?" Another favorite moment came in 1996 when Arnold Palmer was Love's captain. "Arnold made this speech one night about what it meant to be a TOUR player and what it meant to play on a U.S. team and how you supposed to carry yourself and all this stuff," Love recalls. "And he stopped, and he pointed at me. He goes, ‘Davis gets it.' And I’ve told people that a lot, that’s the ultimate compliment I got handed down from Arnold to my dad to me — how you’re supposed to act — and not only to play for him and to be around him and be friends with him. "But then for him to say something like that, I don’t care if anybody else heard it. I got to play on a Presidents Cup team for Arnold Palmer and Ken Venturi and Jack Nicklaus and Hale Irwin and guys that I grew up knowing as a little kid. You see Arnold walk by some little boy and he’d rub the top of his head. Well, I was that kid at Atlanta Country Club out on the putting green with my dad, and then ended up playing for him and Jack. "And that’s why we love the Presidents Cup because it's our tournament and all of our guys that we looked up to were captains. Plus, I played in the first six. So, I have a lot of great memories of it." He's ready to make more in 2022 in Charlotte, too.
