3 more questions to answer at Steelers training camp3 more questions to answer at Steelers training camp
The Steelers need to be ready in case things don’t work out with multiple players at training camp.
Day: July 4, 2021
Brisket, ribs and BBQ: Miami native, Buffalo Bills receiver opens new restaurantBrisket, ribs and BBQ: Miami native, Buffalo Bills receiver opens new restaurant
Isaiah McKenzie has teamed up with Mel Rodriguez, a pitmaster out of Austin, Texas, to serve South Florida locals some “damn good BBQ.”
From Tiger to a teen, the John Deere Classic’s 50 years have been full of memorable momentsFrom Tiger to a teen, the John Deere Classic’s 50 years have been full of memorable moments
SILVIS, Ill. —The John Deere Classic turns 50 this year. The small-town TOUR stop has played a pivotal role in many players’ careers, as the site of their first victory, or at least their first taste of contention, and as a familiar locale for stars hailing from the Midwest. Recent champions include Jordan Spieth and Bryson DeChambeau. Like fellow future major champions Payne Stewart (1982) and David Toms (1997) and 19 other Quad Cities champs, Spieth and DeChambeau scored their maiden TOUR victories at the Deere. As for can-you-top this moments, TPC Deere Run’s closing stretch of holes has produced an array of rallies and exciting finishes, and by such notable winners as Vijay Singh, Kenny Perry, Steve Stricker and Zach Johnson. 1. JORDAN RULES (2013) Spieth had little to lose and a big, bold head start on a brilliant future to gain when he set his feet in the bright white sand of a greenside bunker on TPC Deere Run’s final hole in July 2013. He’d already earned TOUR status and established himself as a rising star before turning 20. Now he had a chance to get his first victory. Spieth had begun his first season as a pro without status on TOUR, but a runner-up finish in his third start and another six top-10 finishes earned him unlimited sponsor’s exemptions for the remainder of the year. Those performances also ensured he’d be a member in good standing the following season. A win at the Deere, though, would earn his entry into the 2013 FedExCup Playoffs, with all the points accrued in those seven previous top-10s also added to his account. It would gain him two full years of exempt TOUR status. It would punch his ticket to the Masters the following April. The young Texan came to the 18th having birdied four of his previous five holes, but needed a fifth birdie to tie the lead. He got it, and did so with a flair for the dramatic that would become SOP (Spieth Operating Procedure) in the years to come. With a one-hop clank off the flagstick, Spieth holed his 44-foot shot from the bunker to earn his way into a three-man playoff. Then he outlasted Zach Johnson and David Hearn over five holes of sudden-death. His first professional win came 13 days shy of his 20th birthday, making him the first teen to win on TOUR in 82 years. 2. GETTING A GRIP ON TIGER (1996) Between September 16, 1996, and August 16, 2009, Tiger Woods would win 36 consecutive PGA TOUR events when holding the outright lead after 54 holes. To this day, Woods has lost just twice when entering the final round in sole possession of the lead. Those numbers make it hard to believe that Woods coughed up the lead the first time he held it on the PGA TOUR. Ed Fiori, nicknamed “The Grip,” was the beneficiary. Making his third start as a pro following a storied amateur career, Woods took the lead with six straight birdies on the inward nine of his second round at Oakwood Country Club. When Sunday dawned, Woods held a one-shot lead over Fiori, a 43-year-old veteran 14 years removed from his last victory. Woods led by three on the fourth tee, but a wild hook into an irrigation pond led to a quadruple bogey and a one-shot deficit. Three holes later, Woods four-putted a short par-4 for a double-bogey. Steady Eddie brought it home with a final round 67 for a two-shot win. Woods shot a 2-over 72 and finished tied for fifth, but he got his first win two weeks later in Las Vegas and is 44-2 as you read this when taking an outright lead into Sunday. Y.E. Yang joined Fiori in the Tiger Tamer Club at the 2009 PGA Championship. 3. A STOP ON THE SLAM TRAIL (2015) Spieth’s brilliant future already was realized when he returned to TPC Deere Run two years after his first win, having won the Masters in April and the U.S. Open in June. The week after the Deere, he would attempt to join fellow Texan Ben Hogan as one of two men to win three professional majors in a single year. Given those stakes, his decision to keep a promise to play the Deere beforehand was questioned in some circles. Yet, Spieth said he came to Silvis with an eye on a winning second leaping deer trophy and to build momentum for his pursuit of a Claret Jug. He accomplished the former with another fast finish, making up four shots in six holes to force another playoff and then defeating Tom Gillis on the second hole of sudden-death. In his bid for immortality at St. Andrews, Spieth finished a single haunting shot out of a playoff. 4. THREE-PEAT (2011) Steve Stricker made his first trip to the Quad Cities before he earned a PGA TOUR card. The Illinois alum made his tournament debut in 1993. Sixteen years later, he started an incredible run at TPC Deere Run. The affable Stricker won in 2009 and 2010 before showing that he had an edge, as well, with his dramatic win in 2011. A walk-off birdie from a difficult lie in a fairway bunker made him just the 18th player to win the same TOUR event in three straight years. Stricker responded to a 24-foot birdie make from the fringe with a full-body, two-handed fist-pump celebration that was entirely out of character, deliciously ferocious and magnificently appropriate. Stricker had taken a five-shot lead into Sunday’s back nine but stood on the 17th tee two shots down to Kyle Stanley. He birdied the par-5 17th for the ninth time in his three-year run at Deere Run and stood in the18th hole’s fairway bunker tied at the top after Stanley bogeyed in front of him. Actually, he almost stood in the bunker. Facing a lie that forced a stance announcer David Feherty likened to a giraffe at a watering hole, Stricker stood left foot in the sand, right foot in the grass, 189 yards from the flagstick. He ripped a 6-iron to the back fringe, holed that putt and it was no more Mr. Nice Guy. For a few seconds, anyway. 5. AN AGELESS WONDER (1979) Sam Snead became the youngest player on TOUR to shoot his age in the second round but the 67-year-old was something less than ecstatic. “Now, I gotta come back two more days,” groused the legend, who was feeling the effects of a bad back after walking 18 holes for only the third time that year. “I was almost trying not to qualify.” Snead’s record 67 didn’t hold up long. After a 74 in the third round, the Slammer rallied with a closing 66 at Oakwood Country Club. 6. A LEGEND’S FIRST (1982) Payne Stewart scored the most fashionable victory on TOUR since the days of Walter Hagen when he carded five back-nine birdies en route to a final-round 63 and his first official TOUR victory. It was also the first tournament in which Stewart played all four days in the plus-fours and Hogan cap that would become his signature look. “What I remember about Payne here is him saying ‘I don’t want to look like everybody else – blond, with a visor,’ and that’s where he started wearing the knickers,” remembered D.A. Weibring. “Payne almost got to the point where he looked funny in pants.” For Stewart, the victory was forever memorable because it was the only time his father, Bill, was on hand to see him win as a pro prior to Bill’s untimely death in 1985. Poignantly, Stewart was wearing the Rolex watch he received for the win when he died young himself in a 1999 airplane tragedy. 7. HATS OFF (2017) It was hat’s off to the SMU Mustangs when Bryson DeChambeau capped a six-birdie back nine with a 14-foot putt at 18 and joined the late Payne Stewart among the strong parade of players who notched their initial TOUR win in the Quad Cities. DeChambeau’s trademark Hogan-style cap is worn in homage to Stewart, a fellow SMU alum. The curious and studious Californian knew a great deal about Stewart, but he didn’t know the Hall of Fame Mustang also had earned his maiden win at the 1982 QCO. When so informed, DeChambeau took off his cap, slapped his knee, and became genuinely emotional. “That broke me,” DeChambeau said later. “He’s done some amazing things for the game of golf, and I hope I can do something similar down the road.” DeChambeau was a highly-touted prospect before his rookie season on the PGA TOUR. He won the NCAA Championship and U.S. Amateur in 2015 and won on the Korn Ferry Tour the following year to earn his PGA TOUR card. He was struggling when he arrived at TPC Deere Run, however, ranked 114th in the FedExCup and in danger of losing his card. He had made the cut in just nine of his 24 starts. The Deere changed the course of his career, however, and sent him down that major-winning road, using his unique approach to the game to win seven more times, including the U.S. Open. 8. ZJ’S FIRST WIN (2012) In the history of the TOUR, it’s hard to imagine a sponsor’s exemption that led to a better relationship than the one the John Deere Classic has enjoyed with Zach Johnson. The native Iowan was on the mini-tours when he was granted an exemption in 2002. He was on his way to leading the Korn Ferry Tour in earnings when he received a second in 2003. Johnson hasn’t missed an event at TPC Deere Run since, including in 2007, when he was the reigning Masters champion, and in 2016, when he was a week away from defending his Open Championship win. Johnson has been a player representative on the tournament’s executive committee since 2008 and is the only player on TOUR who has an endorsement deal with Deere & Company. From 2009 through 2017, Johnson scored seven top-five finishes at the Deere. That included three second-place finishes and an epic victory in 2012, when, on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff with Troy Matteson, he found himself in the same fairway bunker from which Stricker had worked his magic a year earlier. Johnson outdid Stricker, lacing a 6-iron from 194 yards to within a foot of the cup for a very popular tap-in victory. 9. GOYDOS GOES LOW (2010) The round Paul Goydos was putting together after teeing off early in the opening round was the talk of TPC Deere Run. The place seemed to hold its collective breath as Goydos stood over a 7-foot putt at 18 to become the fourth TOUR player to shoot 59 in competition. “Did he get it?” Stricker asked a reporter while on his way to the first tee. Goydos did indeed get his 59. Then Stricker tried to follow suit. Needing to hole a 159-yard 8-iron from the 18th fairway for eagle and an improbable share of the first-round lead, Stricker came within 2 ½ feet and settled for 60. Only once to that point had a 59 and 60 been scored in the same year. A decade later, Scottie Scheffler (59) and Dustin Johnson (60) would match that same-day feat in the second round of THE NORTHERN TRUST at TPC Boston. And Jim Furyk’s 58 at the 2016 Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands would create a new magic number. Still, July 8, 2010, remains a day to remember in Silvis. 10. BEMAN GOES BACK-TO-BACK (1971/1972) In 1971, Deane Beman won the first Quad Cities Open fighting off a 100-degree fever. A year later, he won the second fighting off a future legend. Beman’s closing 4-under 67 was just enough to nip Tom Watson, who posted a 66 just ahead of the defending champion. For the rookie Watson, the near-miss was an early taste of the Sunday heat he’d feel often in his career and he was aided by the “thinking advice” of his playing partner, Lee Trevino. “That was the first time I’d been in contention,” Watson would remember years later, deep into his Hall of Fame career. “That was the first step.” As commissioner years later, Beman would credit the Quad Cities’ volunteers for helping his understanding of the vital importance of volunteer support to achieving his vision for the TOUR. For a QC event that turns 50 this week, Beman’s support from Ponte Vedra proved helpful during some lean and challenging years. Win. Win. Win. Freelance writer Craig DeVrieze is the author of “Magic Happened: Celebrating 50 Years of the John Deere Classic,” available for order here.
‘Most over-achieving event in history of TOUR’ prepares to turn 50‘Most over-achieving event in history of TOUR’ prepares to turn 50
In September of 1920, the Rock Island Independents hosted, and won, the first game in the history of the American Professional Football Association. A week later, the Moline Universal Tractors traveled to central Illinois, where they were soundly beaten by a George Halas-coached bunch called the Decatur Staleys. By 1922, the APFA had been renamed the National Football League; Halas’ Staleys were bearing down in Chicago; the Universal Tractors were out of the game; and the Independents weren’t long for the leather-headed new world of professional football. In 1949, the Red Auerbach-coached Tri-Cities Blackhawks helped usher the National Basketball Association into existence, playing in a 4,000-seat high school barn in Moline. A year later, the Blackhawks drafted a point guard named Bob Cousy but neglected to offer a contract. By 1952, Auerbach and Cousy were together, launching a pro hoops dynasty in Boston. The Blackhawks had moved on, first to Milwaukee, then St. Louis. Today, they are called the Atlanta Hawks. Given the nomadic nature of early professional sports, Rock Island, Moline and the collection of Iowa-Illinois border communities known today as the Quad Cities would be far from alone in wistfully wondering what might have been. Myriad mid-sized Midwest cities — Canton and Dayton in Ohio, Fort Wayne and Hammond in Indiana, Sheboygan and Green Bay in Wisconsin, to name a few — also own foundational roles in pro sports leagues that quickly outgrew all but one. As the lone survivor, the Packers of Green Bay are one of the remarkable stories in all of professional sports. Across the Rust Belt, they serve as the example of what could have been. Yet, while other left-behind locales continue to wonder, the Quad Cities’ major league dreams didn’t disappear with the Independents, Tractors and Blackhawks. Since professional golf first put a tee in the ground in Bettendorf, Iowa, in 1971, Quad Citians tenaciously have clung — time and again, often against all odds — to their one last swing at the Bigs. With apologies to Packers (and the Spacklers), this is a Cinderella story, too. What started as the Quad Cities Open and is celebrated today as the John Deere Classic will turn an improbable 50 this July. The tournament stands as a tribute to spirit, resilience and determination and the staggering impact professional golf can have on a community. The John Deere Classic celebrates its golden anniversary having withstood no fewer than five near-death moments, including at the tender age of 4, when an April 1975 news release announcing its demise was issued and then promptly rescinded. Nine years later, only a volunteer’s promise to cover a $350 debt to a local printer spared the tournament from bankruptcy. Money — or rather a dearth of it – was most often the issue, resulting from the lack of an invested title sponsor. Early purses were among the smallest on TOUR. Network TV wasn’t a thought. Survival was a near-annual discussion. Time and again, though, the hardscrabble, homespun, Cinderella-in-spikes Quad Cities Open battled on. In 1975, a hardcore crew of Jaycees who’d later concede they were too young to know better pulled the fledgling tournament out of the trash and replaced it with crumpled copies of that foreboding news release. In less than two months, they found both a new Pete Dye-designed golf course and a B-List celebrity host for the Jaycees-Ed McMahon Quad Cities Open. Over the ensuing four years, McMahon would bring Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis and a cavalcade of showbiz chums straight from Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” couch to lend star power to a tournament largely overshadowed by the competing Open Championship an ocean away. Meanwhile, golfers like 1975 winner Roger Maltbie and 1976 runner-up Fuzzy Zoeller knocked back post-round beers at Ed’s Place, the homemade bar situated behind the 18th green at the Dye-designed Oakwood Country Club in Coal Valley, Illinois. It was a rollicking summer party until last call for Ed’s Place came after the 1979 QCO. “I just had to give it up because every time I got somebody to play in my golf tournament, they wanted me to come to theirs,” the entertainer explained a decade later. “I had so many markers to pay back when the thing was over, I just couldn’t keep up.” In 1984, the first official audit in tournament history uncovered debt in the six-figures. After a board vote on whether to fight on or file for bankruptcy deadlocked at 9 votes apiece, tournament supporters took to the phones nightly to solicit donations that retired much of the debt. Local creditors were asked to take dimes on dollars they were owed, and did. “This was our Chicago Cubs,” said John Wetzel, that year’s volunteer chair whose personal promise on the aforementioned $350 printer’s debt averted a small claims summons that would have forced the board to file for bankruptcy. “We had a spot in the professional sporting community. Enough people bought into that vision to keep it going.” A year later, the tournament was facing a self-imposed vow to increase the purse from $200,000 to $300,000. That meant replacing the insufficient $60,000 title-sponsor investment of a regional brewing company. The board mass-mailed 50 potential corporate backers, but the search came up empty. They found an option B, cobbling together funding from four local municipalities, a like amount of matching funds from the Illinois Tourism Bureau, and a $15,000 grant from the PGA TOUR to stay alive, if only for one year more. On a shuttle en route to that year’s pro-am, Jim Jensen, a regional VP for Hardee’s Food Systems, Inc., saw a coupon for a competing burger chain on the back of his tournament ticket, remembered seeing a letter cross his desk months earlier asking for a title sponsorship, and wondered aloud: “Nobody else wants to come to the table. Hardee’s ought to sponsor this. And lots of people on the bus said, ‘Yeah. Why don’t you?’” Thus, began nine years of long-sought stability for the tournament former TOUR executive Duke Butler refers to today as “the most over-achieving event in the history of the PGA TOUR.” Overachievers and golf have a strong history in the Quad Cities. Quad Cities native Jack Fleck was a Davenport municipal pro who played only occasionally on TOUR in the early 50s, and almost always with little success, until he ventured west in June of 1955 to compete in the U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Fleck famously returned a conquering hero, the Cinderella’s Cinderella, having birdied the 72nd hole to tie the legendary Ben Hogan. He outplayed the Hawk in an 18-hole playoff the next day, and brought the Open trophy home to a rousing reception. The Quad Cities golf community still was buzzing over Fleck’s epic upset when the idea of bringing the PGA TOUR to town began to percolate. Avid golfers like Franklin “Whitey” Barnard, a high school teammate of Fleck’s, kicked around the notion of building a championship-caliber golf course that could challenge top professionals. Step One was achieved when Crow Valley Country Club opened in 1969. Two years later, the Quad Cities Open debuted as one of several satellite events created to provide the so-called rabbits chasing opportunity on the non-exempt TOUR places to compete for beer and gas money between Monday qualifiers. Deane Beman hoisted that first trophy, and won again the following year, edging a young runner-up named Tom Watson for the title of a Quad Cities Open that had graduated from a satellite stop to a fully-sanctioned PGA TOUR event. Less than two years later, Beman set his clubs aside to succeed Joe Dey as TOUR commissioner, and he set out to make professional golf the big-league equal of North America’s Big Four — the NFL, NBA, Major League baseball, and the National Hockey League. “I was a fan of other sports, and I realized the kind of income other athletes were making,” Beman said. “When I became commissioner, bowling got more TV money than golf did.” Beman accomplished his big-league mission in a big, big way. From 1974 through Beman’s retirement in 1994, purses fueled by deep-pocketed corporate sponsors grew from a collective $8.16 million to a sum total of $56.14 million. Television revenues increased by 2,000%. Within a decade, Beman built a major-league enterprise certain to challenge the survival of events in smaller communities like the Quad Cities. In fact, most like-sized cities that preceded or followed the Quad Cities on TOUR ultimately didn’t survive. Through grit and determination, the Quad Cities continue to defy the odds. Critical to the tournament’s survival has been a willingness to accept what the TOUR considers “disadvantaged dates.” The Quad Cities spent 16 years directly opposite the British Open and another 21 the week before or after. The Hardee’s Golf Classic moved to September in 1990, but the burger chain withdrew its sponsorship after the 1994 event, and only an agreement for another “disadvantaged date” — playing opposite the Ryder and President Cups each fall — bought the Quad Cities event some time. Yet that lifeline was unraveling in 1996, until a young hopeful making his third professional start took the 54-hole lead into the final round of what was then the Quad City Classic. A grizzled veteran, Ed Fiori, eventually ran down the big-hitting youngster, denying the Quad Cities a chance to claim a place in golf history as home to Tiger Woods’ first PGA TOUR win. Still, Woods’ presence, as it was at so many events, was a boost. Just shy of 150 years earlier, a Vermont-born blacksmith with a promising invention called the steel plow set up shop on the banks of the Mississippi, a few miles north of what would become Oakwood, Illinois. John Deere’s steel plow was fundamental to the Quad Cities becoming the Farm Machinery Capital of the World. By 1979, when Illinois’ D.A. Weibring won the last of the Ed McMahon-Jaycees Quad Cities Open, more than 52,000 Quad Citians were working around the clock in dozens of factories to produce farm equipment bearing the names of Case, Farmall, International Harvester and, of course, John Deere. With its corporate headquarters based in nearby Moline, Deere was a title sponsor target from the moment the Quad Cities tournament teed off. And, to many, that seemed a natural fit. Two of the founder’s early descendants, after all, had a grand history in the game. Grandson John Deere Cady played on the silver-medalist U.S. men’s golf team at the 1904 Summer Olympics. And a cabin at Augusta National still bears the name of Deere’s great-nephew Burton Peek. Still, Deere & Company did not grow into the Fortune 150 company it is today by investing in family pastimes. William Hewitt, the last in a line of Deere chairmen with a family tie to the founder, declined those 1970s asks for significant sponsorship dollars. When the farm economy downturned on a dime in the midst of an epic recession in the 1980s, Case and IH turned out the lights on their Quad Cities-based factories, left town and took thousands of jobs with them. Deere remained but was far from immune to the economic realities of the recession. It was in no position through the 1980s to help a gritty little golf tournament fight for its life. John Deere’s company turned its fate around, thanks to longstanding strategic commitments to global expansion and product diversification. That the latter included a golf and turf equipment product line started in 1985 is the lynchpin reason the Deere turns 50 this year. Butler, the TOUR executive, helped put the over-achieving tournament over the top. The tournament was on its last legs in May 1996, when Butler and tournament officials traveled to Deere & Company headquarters for one last ask of the flagging event’s last best hope. The Deere team was cordial but skeptical until Butler, son of a Texas cattle rancher loyal to Deere equipment, put an intriguing proposal on the table: Were Deere & Company to take on title sponsorship of the tournament, the TOUR would build a TPC course to host and John Deere would become the official golf course equipment supplier across the expanding TPC network. Skepticism quickly waned at One John Deere Place, and negotiations were proceeding apace long before Fiori caught a Tiger by the tail in September. In April of 1997 – the same month that the kid who lost to Fiori won the Masters by 12 — the deal was sealed and announced. As its golden anniversary nears, the John Deere Classic boasts the third longest title sponsor relationship on TOUR. In 2018 and 2019, the John Deere Classic and Deere won the TOUR’s year-end award for Best Title Sponsor Integration. The miniature tractors that serve as tee markers and the popular Big Dig, where players and their families get to test drive Deere products, are just two examples of the cohesive relationship between the tournament and sponsor. The payback for those unrelenting volunteers who fought long and hard to keep the Classic on the calendar, meanwhile, has been immense. Since its introduction in 1992, the JDC’s high-flying, highly creative Birdies for Charity program has generated $133 million for well over 600 charitable organizations in the region. Thanks to the generous donations neighbors and local businesses annually make to soliciting charities, bolstered by a Deere- and tournament-funded bonus pool, the JDC has proudly owned the title of per capita leader in charitable giving on TOUR for a decade-plus. In seven of the past 11 years, the JDC earned the TOUR’s Most Engaged Community Award, and the 2019 event was backed by 2,200 volunteers, more than double largest volunteer force to turn out at Oakwood. Patrons continue to embrace the event for the one-week-per-year taste of the big leagues it presents. The tournament’s long-embraced niche as a launching pad for TOUR stars has produced 23 first-time winners, among them Payne Stewart (1982), Scott Hoch (1980), David Toms (1997), and, most recently, Jordan Spieth (2013) and Bryson DeChambeau (2017). Fans nearly witnessed the first wins of Woods and Tom Watson. And, in addition to seeing Woods take his first lead into a Sunday final round, they also saw Sam Snead, co-record-holder with Woods for most career TOUR wins, take his last lead into a Sunday in 1974. Over 49 years and counting, Quad Citians have seen 15 of the 24 men who have held the top spot in the Official World Golf Rankings tee it up in their midst. They also have seen 26 of the 44 TOUR golfers inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame over the past 50 years play through. For a community that ranked behind 143 other U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the 2020 census, that’s pretty big stuff. That’s a small community with little reason to regret big-league opportunities gone by. Who needs the Universal Tractors, anyway? Freelance writer Craig DeVrieze is the author of “Magic Happened: Celebrating 50 Years of the John Deere Classic,” available for order here.
Will the Mets win the NL East? Are the Yankees still a contender? We debate Subway Series, Round 1Will the Mets win the NL East? Are the Yankees still a contender? We debate Subway Series, Round 1
As the two teams meet on Sunday Night Baseball, we take a deeper look at the state of the Big Apple’s big league clubs.
Booker, CP3, PG13 or Middleton? Which superstar owned the conference finals?Booker, CP3, PG13 or Middleton? Which superstar owned the conference finals?
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How to watch the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Round 4: Featured Groups, live scores, tee times, TV timesHow to watch the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Round 4: Featured Groups, live scores, tee times, TV times
Round 4 of the Rocket Mortgage Classic takes place Sunday from Detroit Golf Club in Michigan. Troy Merritt and Joaquin Niemann share the 54-hole lead with the young Chilean remaining bogey free over the 54 holes. Kevin Kisner, Pat Perez and Sungjae Im are among the 14 players within four shots entering the final round. Here’s everything you need to know to follow the action, including Featured Groups for PGA TOUR LIVE. Leaderboard Full tee times HOW TO FOLLOW (All times ET) Television: Thursday-Friday, 3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-3 p.m. (Golf Channel), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (CBS). PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday 6:45 a.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Groups), Saturday-Sunday 8:15 a.m.-3 p.m. (Featured Groups). Saturday-Sunday 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Holes). Radio: 12 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-6 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio). TOURCast: Get shot-by-shot info in real time with shot tracks and video with TOURCast. TOUR Pulse: Get the PGA TOUR app to utilize TOUR Pulse, which provides users the ability to experience a mix of content, such as video highlights, written hole summaries and stat graphics on every player after every hole they complete. FEATURED GROUPS 9:15 a.m. ET: Patrick Reed and Tyler Duncan 9:25 a.m. ET: Matthew Wolff and Kramer Hickok MUST READS Niemann, Merritt share lead Willie Mack III makes first TOUR cut Bryson DeChambeau will have new caddie in Rocket Mortgage defense Davis Thompson: Five things to know What The Pros Are Playing: Rocket Mortgage Rocket Mortgage Classic bridging Detroit’s digital divide CALL OF THE DAY
Bucks took a long and strange path to FinalsBucks took a long and strange path to Finals
So what if Milwaukee benefitted from a few opponent injuries along the way? Giannis Antetokounmpo and company earned their trip to the NBA Finals.
Saturday’s Top PlaysSaturday’s Top Plays
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Game Recap: Bucks 118, Hawks 107Game Recap: Bucks 118, Hawks 107
Led by Jrue Holidays 27 points, nine rebounds, nine assists and four steals, the No. 3 seed Bucks defeated the No. 5 seed Hawks, 118-107, in Game 6. Khris Middleton added a game-high 32 points (27 in the 2nd half), along with seven assists and three steals for the Bucks in the victory, while Trae Young tallied 14 points, four rebounds and nine assists for the Hawks. The Bucks have now closed out this best-of-seven series, 4-2, and will advance to the NBA Finals for the third time in franchise history and the first time since 1974 to face the Phoenix Suns. Game 1 of the 2021 NBA Finals will take place on Tuesday, July 6.