Viewers guide to Rangers-Avs on ESPN+Viewers guide to Rangers-Avs on ESPN+
It’s a potential Stanley Cup Final matchup as Colorado hosts the Blueshirts. Here are players to watch, key stats, and more.
Day: December 14, 2021
Larson left questioning ‘bent rules’ in F1 finishLarson left questioning ‘bent rules’ in F1 finish
NASCAR champion Kyle Larson is as conflicted as anyone over the controversial ending of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that made Max Verstappen the 2021 Formula One champion over Lewis Hamilton.
Family memories continue to be built at PNC ChampionshipFamily memories continue to be built at PNC Championship
ORLANDO, Fla. – Fathers and sons and golf? The three have been joined together since there were sticks and small rocks and lone crooked flagsticks protruding from barren fields in Scotland, while kings still ruled. This week’s PNC Championship, which begins Saturday at Orlando’s Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, will garner extra attention as Tiger Woods, partnered once again with his 12-year-old son, Charlie, makes his return to golf following a horrific single-vehicle crash in Los Angeles in February. The 36-hole event, featuring 20 teams and played using a relaxed scramble format, will be televised by NBC to a national audience over the weekend. Many interested golf fans (and Woods’ fellow competitors) are waiting to get some inkling of where he stands in his arduous rehabilitation 10 months after his frightening accident. He counts himself a lucky man. That Woods is walking, let alone playing golf again, just days before his 46th birthday on Dec. 30 says something about his resolve, work ethic, stubbornness and steely resiliency. It also serves up a statement for the event in which he is playing and the true reason he is here. Woods said in an interview at his own Hero World Challenge two weeks ago that he is a long, long distance from competing on the PGA TOUR once more. Take away this weekend’s TV cameras and bright lights, strip the competition down to its very core, and Tiger might be as human as we ever have viewed him. As he tweeted when he committed to play on Dec. 8, he is playing as a dad. That’s all. A dad looking forward to playing the game he loves alongside his son, who seems to love it, too. Acorn, meet the tree. Charlie Woods stole the show at last year’s PNC Championship, showing off incredible skills for an 11-year-old, not to mention so many of his father’s famous mannerisms. Tiger was nervous for him, understandably, but Charlie thrived in the spotlight, showing off his dad’s laser focus, the spinning club twirls, and even his dad’s trademark fist pumps. Charlie’s 5-wood from 175 yards to 3 feet to set up an eagle-3 at the par-5 third hole in last year’s PNC made the evening highlights of every media outlet on the planet. Along with PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan and Jay’s dad, Joe Monahan, longtime IMG executive Alastair Johnston – the creator of the Father-Son event born in 1995 – joined Tiger and Charlie for a pro-am round at the PNC a year ago. Tiger was clearly different, Johnston said, so filled with joy to watch his son in the arena. Johnston has had an interesting window into the life of Tiger, not only through his management company, IMG, but as his former next-door neighbor back when Woods lived in the tony gated Isleworth enclave in Orlando. In fact, Woods was awash in accolades upon returning to Florida following his mind-blowing, 12-shot victory at the 1997 Masters, the first of his 15 major championships. He went out to retrieve his mail one day, and Johnston wanted to offer his own congratulations. You know, Johnston told Woods, you now are qualified to play in the Father-Son. “He looked at me as if I had three heads, and asked, ‘What’s that?’” Johnston said via phone on Monday. laughing. “I said, ‘Oh, you’ll see.’” Johnston, who worked side by side with Arnold Palmer for many years, made a terrific discovery during a stroll through the locker room one day during the 1995 Senior PLAYERS Championship in Detroit. There were courtesy phones set up for players to use. On one phone was Jack Nicklaus. Raymond Floyd was on a phone in a different corner. On a third phone, Dave Stockton. All three men had played that afternoon, but seemed much more interested to check in with home to see how their sons were doing in various college and junior competitions. Johnston had an idea: What if there was a tournament, a real competition, in which fathers could compete alongside their sons? And to make the tournament field elite, each father needed to be a major champion (winners of THE PLAYERS later were added). Eventually, what began as the Father-Son at Vero Beach’s Windsor Club in 1995 would evolve into something much more inclusionary, hence the name change to the PNC Championship. Today, the qualifications are to be a major winner (male or female) competing with a family member. Fuzzy Zoeller, Jerry Pate and Bernhard Langer all would compete alongside their daughters, and last year, Annika Sorenstam competed alongside her father, Tom. This week’s field includes LPGA No. 1 Nelly Korda, who is playing alongside her famous tennis-playing dad, Petr. Players have teed it up with stepsons. Bubba Watson is playing with his father-in-law. “Adding grandfathers,” Johnston explained, “allowed Arnold (Palmer) to compete, and nobody was objecting to that.” Many major champions who’d like to compete simply aren’t able because daylight limits the field to 20 teams, which makes for some tough late-year phone calls for Johnston. It’s not so much telling the famous major winner the news, but envisioning the conversation that person must then have with his relative to break the news. Johnston starts thinking about fields two and three years in advance, and said he is driven by “great narratives.” It intrigues him to see Watson, a three-time major champion, able to compete with his father-in-law. The Cinks – 2009 Open Championship winner Stewart Cink and his son, Reagan – were invited to return after they successfully paired for two PGA TOUR victories last season, with Reagan on his dad’s bag. Of course, there is no bigger, or more attention-packed, ongoing narrative than Woods hitting shots once more. A year ago, he let Charlie, who plays from forward tees, take care of many of the drives for the team, and this week, that unquestionably will be a point of strategy. “This is Dad’s ‘Take Your Kid to Work Day,’” Johnston said. “And Tiger and Charlie epitomized that. Tiger was very nervous for Charlie (last year, in Charlie’s debut). This year he’ll be relying on Charlie. “Without having done it last year, I don’t think Tiger would be playing this year. But the way Charlie handled it all … I knew that if there was a way of doing it, there was a good chance that Tiger was going to play.” So away we go. It’s a late-season “hit-and-giggle” event, as Tiger may affectionately call it, but don’t think the shots won’t count. They will and they won’t, but on a bigger scale, represent an important milestone and tiny step forward as Tiger Woods moves toward the future that remains uncertain. When Saturday dawns at the PNC, Woods will be there not as the man trying to break Sam Snead’s record for TOUR victories or a man contemplating resuming his pursuit of Jack’s major mark. Tiger Woods will be hitting shots as a dad, like many of us do on Saturdays. And there always is great importance in that.
PGA TOUR stats of the year for 2021PGA TOUR stats of the year for 2021
This year, the PGA TOUR delivered a bevvy of historic performances and remarkable finishes. This marked the first time in 14 years that THE PLAYERS Championship and all four majors were each decided by two strokes or fewer. Seemingly every week, the record book got a new addition – whether by tying the longest sudden-death PGA TOUR playoff since 1949 (Travelers Championship, eight holes) or through incredible on-course performances. Here are the best statistics of 2021 on the PGA TOUR: -27 Let’s start with one of the best duels of the year in all of sport: Patrick Cantlay and Bryson DeChambeau needing six playoff holes to decide a winner at the BMW Championship. Cantlay nailed a 21-foot birdie putt on the final hole of regulation to force the playoff, meaning at 27-under, whoever didn’t win would set the PGA TOUR record for lowest 72-hole score to par by a player who didn’t win the tournament. DeChambeau ultimately claimed that distinction. +14.58 Cantlay’s putting performance at the BMW was historically great. He made 21 putts of 10 feet or longer in regulation, by far the most for any player in a single tournament since ShotLink began tracking such things more than 15 years ago. His +14.58 Strokes Gained: Putting for the week also set a ShotLink-era record. On his way to winning the FedExCup, Cantlay added four more rounds in the 60s at East Lake, giving him 15 straight sub-70 rounds to finish the 2020-21 season. The last player with a longer streak to end a year was Charles Howell III in 2002 (16 straight). 14 Closing out a victory on the PGA TOUR is no easy task: over the last 10 years, only 34.2% of players to hold a 54-hole lead or co-lead have gone on to win. But for 14 consecutive PGA TOUR events this summer, closing with the 54-hole lead went from difficult to impossible. From the Charles Schwab Challenge (won by Jason Kokrak, who entered the final round one shot back) through THE NORTHERN TRUST (won by Tony Finau, who entered the day two off the lead) not a single PGA TOUR event was won by a player who held the 54-hole lead or co-lead. The run of 14 such winners in a row was the longest such streak on TOUR in the last 30 seasons. -12 Sitting eight back of Lee Westwood on Friday evening at THE PLAYERS Championship, Justin Thomas knew he needed an historic closing 36 holes to get into contention. That’s exactly what he did. Thomas shot 12 under on the weekend, tying the lowest closing 36-hole score in PLAYERS history. Thomas was a ball-striking savant all weekend: his +11.2 Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green are the most by any player over the closing 36 holes at TPC Sawgrass since tracking began in 2004. At age 27, Thomas became the second player to have double-digit PGA TOUR wins, a major and a PLAYERS title before age 28, joining – who else – Tiger Woods. 513 Sungjae Im, who played 17 more rounds than any other player in the 2021 PGA TOUR season, set the single-season record for most birdies-or-better, with 513. The previous mark was held by Steve Flesch, who made 509 in the 2000 campaign. While Im’s record is perfectly legitimate, perhaps even more remarkable is that he did this while ranking 29th for the season in par-breaker percentage (23.4%). Im played 42 more rounds than the leader in par-breaker percentage in 2021, Bryson DeChambeau (26.3%). His historic birdie-making sum is a brilliant testament to his rigorous playing schedule and consistently solid results. 6 Perhaps no player permeated major championship storylines more often in 2021 than a man who never actually found the winner’s circle. Louis Oosthuizen led or co-led following six major championship rounds in 2021. Since the PGA Championship switched to stroke play in 1958, Oosthuizen is the only player to hold the lead or co-lead that many times after major rounds and not win a major that season. Since the first Masters Tournament was held in 1934, only four men have had a major championship season with three top-3 finishes but no wins: Jack Nicklaus (1964 and 1977), Ernie Els (2000), Rickie Fowler (2014) and Oosthuizen. 2-for-8 Contrasting the majorly-forlorn South African is the incredible ascension of Collin Morikawa, who won his second major championship at The Open this summer. His two victories have come in just eight career majors, the fewest of any player since the first Masters in 1934. Only two men in the last century won their second professional major in fewer starts Walter Hagen (sixth start, 1919 U.S. Open) and Gene Sarazen (fourth start, 1922 PGA). There are only three instances since 2000 where a player won a major championship with a bogey-free 66 or lower in the final round. Rory McIlroy had one of them, at the 2012 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island. After this summer at Royal St George’s, Morikawa has the other two (64 at the 2020 PGA, 66 at the 2021 Open). +2.08 Only one player gained more than 2 strokes per round over the field on the PGA TOUR in 2021: U.S. Open champion Jon Rahm. For the calendar year, Rahm ranked either first or second on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Strokes Gained: Ball Striking (tee & approach shots). Couple that with a top-20 performance on and around the greens (18th in Strokes Gained: Short Game per round), and Rahm developed himself into arguably the most complete player in the game as he ascended to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking. In the 2021 season, Rahm became the fourth player since 1980 to have 15 or more top-10 finishes in a season with 22 starts or fewer. The others to do it are Tiger Woods (twice, 1999 and 2000), Tom Watson (1980) and Dustin Johnson (2015-16). 20 Rory McIlroy claimed his 20th career PGA TOUR title at THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT, making him the second-youngest player (age 32) born outside the United States to achieve the milestone. Harry Cooper, born in England in 1904, is credited with his 20th PGA TOUR title at age 31. Since 1960, McIlroy is one of just seven players to reach 20 official PGA TOUR titles before age 33, along with Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. 31.8 With an average Official World Golf Ranking of just under 32, the fall collection of PGA TOUR winners in 2021 was, statistically, the best we have ever seen. For comparison, the average World Ranking of winners in the fall of 2020 was 169.8. Every winner in the fall portion of the 2021 schedule was ranked in the top-60 at the time of his victory. Only one other fall stretch can lay claim to even having an average ranking of its winners better than 60 (2013, 53.2). 50 The golf world probably needs additional time to gain proper perspective of Phil Mickelson’s historic PGA Championship victory in May at Kiawah Island. Of the 458 events deemed major championships, stretching across more than 160 years, Mickelson is the oldest player to win one of the game’s four most storied events. To say Mickelson caught lightning in a bottle is an understatement: as of Thursday, Mickelson will have one top-10 finish on the PGA TOUR in the last 500 days. It will be a win at a major championship. Mickelson’s PGA Championship win made him the first player in PGA TOUR history to have victories more than 30 years apart. His first win came at the 1991 Northern Telecom Open, 30 years, 4 months and 10 days before his triumph at the 2021 PGA. The winners of the four men’s major championships in 2021 were 24, 26, 29 and 50. Since the first Masters was held in 1934, it’s the only time that there has been a year where all four majors were held and none of the winners were in their 30s or 40s.
Maravich’s LSU jacket sold at auction for $117KMaravich’s LSU jacket sold at auction for $117K
Hall of Famer “Pistol” Pete Maravich’s LSU letterman jacket sold for nearly $116,924 at an auction over the weekend.
Indiana, Kansas schedule matchups in ’22, ’23Indiana, Kansas schedule matchups in ’22, ’23
Kansas will host Indiana for the front end of a home-and-home series between the traditional college basketball powers in 2022, with the Jayhawks visiting the Hoosiers in 2023.
From club twirls to fist pumps to allergies, even Tiger Woods can’t believe the similarities between him and his son, CharlieFrom club twirls to fist pumps to allergies, even Tiger Woods can’t believe the similarities between him and his son, Charlie
Tiger Woods and his son, Charlie, have some of the same mannerisms. But you have to watch Tiger Woods watch for himself to truly understand.
Nets’ protocols list grows to 5 as four ruled outNets’ protocols list grows to 5 as four ruled out
The Nets ruled out four players due to health and safety protocols, bringing their total players on the list to five.
NFL Power Rankings: 1-32 poll, plus offense, defense and special teams rankingsNFL Power Rankings: 1-32 poll, plus offense, defense and special teams rankings
The FPI really dislikes Davis Mills and the Texans, loves Tom Brady and the Buccaneers and hasn’t quite figured out T.J. Watt and the Steelers.
Hamilton set for knighthood at Windsor CastleHamilton set for knighthood at Windsor Castle
Seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton is set to receive his knighthood on Wednesday, just days after controversially losing the 2021 title to Max Verstappen.